Endocrinologists outline treatment for type 1 diabetes

A group of endocrinologists have drafted a peer-reviewed standard-of-care document designed to guide primary-care physicians, who provide frontline treatment to 50% of adults with type 1 diabetes.

“We have all these great studies of cardiovascular risk prevention in type 2 diabetes,” said study co-author Dr. Irl Hirsch, professor (Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition) and UW Medicine’s diabetes treatment and teaching chair. “Here in the United States, we have 1.8 million people with type 1 diabetes and yet we have almost no direct studies. I went to the New England Journal of Medicine and said, ‘Look, this is a huge problem.’

Hirsch and colleagues addressed this by publishing guidelines describing how heart, kidney and liver disease manifest in type 1 patients, and identifying best treatment options for high blood glucose, hypertension, obesity and several specific heart conditions.

Read the full story from UW Medicine Newsroom.