August 21, 2024 — Yesterday, Eli Lilly and Company announced an impressive topline number from the results of a three-year study of tirzepatide in adults with obesity or overweight and prediabetes. That number was 94% prevention of progression from prediabetes to diabetes with tirzepatide. No, it was not 100%. But this is awfully close. Historical Context We will have to […]
March 14, 2023 — Recently, we have written much about the high cost of obesity medicines, limited coverage under health plans, and the need for change. This is a very real problem and glaciers melt faster (sad to say) than policy makers make progress on this. But absurd arguments about the cost of obesity care do not help. In […]
February 9, 2023 — Vitamin D is an illusory panacea. Popular fascination with this “sunshine vitamin” has drawn people to latch onto associations that it has with many conditions. But those associations, when tested, often turn out to be confounded. So does a new systematic review and meta-analysis of vitamin D in prediabetes tell a different story? Anastassios Pittas […]
September 24, 2022 — “There is more to obesity than meets the eye,” write James René Jolin and Fatima Cody Stanford in the Postgraduate Medical Journal. But too often, visible behaviors and appearances guide our responses to this disease. So we end up wondering why the result of earnest efforts to reduce it in both individuals and the population […]
February 1, 2022 — It is a familiar pattern, but no less disappointing because of that. A government commission issues a report and cries out for action. “Another health crisis challenges the U.S.: diabetes mellitus,” says the report issued yesterday by the National Clinical Care Commission. The report correctly identifies obesity as a key driver of rising deaths from […]
January 13, 2022 — The numbers are stark. More than 80 percent of Americans with diabetes are not meeting clinical targets to reduce heart disease risk. For people with both diabetes and obesity, more than 90 percent are bearing unnecessary risk. These numbers come from a new scientific statement in Circulation from the American Heart Association. On top of […]
March 18, 2021 — This week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a new draft recommendation on screening for diabetes and pre-diabetes for people with a high BMI. Until now, the recommendation has been to screen everyone with a BMI over 25 at age 40 and up. But the new recommendation, if it becomes final, would expand […]
October 23, 2019 — We have an effective treatment for preventing diabetes. It cuts the risk by 60 percent in people with prediabetes. For every person on Medicare, it saves $2,650. In just 15 months. But Medicare can’t figure out how to make it available to the people who need it. This is the sad story of implementing the […]
April 14, 2019 — Tomorrow is tax day in the U.S. Maybe you have it all squared away or maybe it’s not a worry for you. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth taking this moment to think about a tax we could all live without. Writing in Diabetes Care, Timothy Dall tells us that we’re all paying what […]
August 24, 2018 — It’s a thought bubble that looms over many conversations about obesity. A hundred million Americans have it. Therefore, we can’t possibly respond on an adequate scale with treatment. All too often, that thought is enough. Conversations about obesity care stop before they really get started. But a new study published in Obesity today points to […]
