On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:13:54 -0500, Cindy Wells
<lcwells8892@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003087
>(the authors are German so I suspect the patient recruitment was in that
>area)
>
>They started with patients with an A1c around 7 and on oral meds only.
Then
>they compared patients testing once a week with those testing ~4 times a
>week with the tests before dinner and one test before lunch. Both groups
>maintained an A1c around 7.
>
>I think those of us who have come to m.h.d. will want better A1c's and
use
>SMBG to gain a different set of data and make some lifestyle adjustments.
>
>Cindy Wells
If it wasn't deadly serious we would think this is a joke:
"Patients with T2D treated with oral antidiabetic drugs were
randomized to two groups: either one SMBG (low) or four SMBG
(high) per week."
Alan M and I disagree on the need for testing, but Alan, if
you are reading this, could you confirm that test strips are
subsidised for diabetics in Germany?
Four SMBG per week is high? In that case Jennifer's advice
would be seen as obsessively extreme, using up two or three
month's worth of strips in a week.
One to add to my bibliography of abysmal SMBG studies. I
wrote this comment on articles like this last month:
http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-often-should-we-test.html
"How Often Should We Test?
Over the past few years there have been some truly abysmal
scientific research papers published on the futility of
frequent self-testing by type 2 diabetics. Three that come
to mind are The Fremantle Diabetes Study
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/8/1764
from Western Australia, Self-monitoring in Type 2 diabetes:
a randomized trial of reimbursement policy
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118552827/abstract
from Canada; and Impact of self monitoring of blood glucose
in the management of patients with non-insulin treated
diabetes: open parallel group randomised trial
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39247.447431.BEv1
from the UK.
All of these papers have three things in common: they were
published in countries where the government subsidises test
strip supplies to diabetics, and thus has an interest in
cutting health budget costs; they considered testing more
than once a day to be "frequent"; and they did not educate
the subjects being studied on how to interpret test results
with a view to adjusting their lifestyle to improve results.
I previously discussed the UK paper by Farmer et al in
Self-Testing and Type 2 Management a year ago. Those same
comments apply to all those papers."
Cheers, Alan, T2, Australia.
--
d&e, metformin 1500mg, ezetrol 10mg
Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter.
http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com
(Be Smart, Be Skeptical)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan_s/
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com
(Two Indian Hotels: to Sleep, Perchance..)
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