The 2011 Joint Plenary Session Symposium: current strategies and evolving paradigms of treatment for type 2 diabetes.

摘要

Diabetes mellitus is now endemic in the United States, affecting an estimated 25.8 million people. This epidemic has paralleled the rampant spread of obesity in this country. About 1.9 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people aged 20 years or older in 2010 alone. If this trend continues, 1 in 3 U.S. adults will have diabetes by 2050. The extremely rapid escalation of this disease in recent years is made further troubling by the fact that an increasing number of younger individuals-including adolescents and even prepu-bescent children-are developing type 2 diabetes, which used to be almost exclusively restricted to older generations. Because diabetes is a progressive disease, its earlier onset has enormous ramifications. In addition, 79 million people have prediabetes, therefore putting them at high risk to develop this disease. It is the most common cause of end-stage kidney disease and blindness in adults. The risk of death from heart disease in adults with diabetes is about 2 to 4 tunes higher than in adults without it; similarly, the risk of stroke is 2 to 4 times higher in patients with diabetes. About 60% to 70% of diabetic patients have mild to severe neuropathy, and 60% of nontraumatic lower-limb amputations occur in patients with diabetes. Furthermore, the total costs of diagnosed diabetes in the United States are a staggering dollar174 billion, which includes dollar116 billion for direct medical costs and doollar58 billion for indirect costs (premature mortality, disability and work loss). If the nonmonetary costs-the physical tolls this disease takes on millions of individuals and those who love them-are factored in as well, one can see that the importance of increasing our clinical understanding and finding new ways to treat diabetes cannot be overstated.