Federal officials have revamped a big diabetes study because
some patients were dying of a treatment designed to help them.
The finding challenges the main goal of diabetes care — that
it's good to get every patient's blood sugar as close to normal
as possible. Millions of patients with diabetes are struggling
to get their blood sugars as close to normal as possible. The
benefits are proven with Type 1 diabetes, which usually begins
early in life. But proof has been lacking for Type 2 diabetes,
which is far more common. So the National Institutes of Health
launched a big study of aggressive blood-sugar control: 10,000
older diabetics at high risk of heart disease got either
standard diabetes care or intensive treatment to lower their
blood sugar. The results were the opposite of what everybody
expected. The group that got standard treatment had 203 deaths.
But the group that got intensive blood-sugar-lowering treatment
had 257 deaths over four years. That's 54 more deaths in the
group with lower blood sugar.