Diabetes treatments ’do more harm than good’ for many people

Treatments to reduce blood sugar levels do more harm than good in many type 2 diabetes patients, particularly older people, finds new research from UCL, the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Hospital. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that for many people the benefits of taking diabetes medications are so small that they are outweighed by the minor harms and risks associated with treatment. The benefits of treatment decline with age and by age 75 the harms of most treatments are likely to outweigh any potential benefits. 3.2 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. More than 250,000 inject insulin every year and approximately 850,000 receive the oral diabetes medication metformin. Whether patients will benefit from a diabetes treatment depends less on their blood sugar level than their age and the hassles and side-effects of the treatment, say the authors. They modelled the net gains or losses to quality of life associated with treatments to lower blood sugar, based primarily on a twenty-year study of type 2 diabetes treatments involving 5,102 people in the UK.