Diabetes: Important information
The number of people with diabetes mellitus is increasing dramatically.
A worrying increase in the incidence of type II diabetes among children is being observed as a consequence of obesity.
It is estimated that 1,000,000 of our fellow citizens suffer from diabetes mellitus, representing 10% of the country’s population. The major threat before the disease is diagnosed is metabolic syndrome, which was described in 1988 by G. Reaven.
In 1998, the WHO established the diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome as follows:
- Blood pressure > 140/90 mmHg
- Triglycerides > 150 mg% and/or HDL < 35 mg%
- Central obesity with a BMI > 30
- Microalbuminuria > 20 μg/min
The benefits of the preventive management of metabolic syndrome have been demonstrated by numerous international multicentre studies, such as DCC, UKPDS, DCCT/EDIC and STOP-NIDDM, as well as the recent DiRECT study, which showed that people with diabetes who managed to lose more than 10 kg could potentially reverse the disease without using medication.
Recent experience with COVID-19 demonstrated that patients with diabetes and a history of microvascular complications, such as nephropathy and/or retinopathy, were associated with poor outcomes. Furthermore, the degree of hyperglycaemia upon hospital admission was a poor prognostic factor.
On the occasion of World Diabetes Day, let us remember the definition of the disease given by Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the 1st century AD: “Diabetes is a dreadful affliction, since it represents the wasting away of the flesh and the limbs of the body into urine.”
