If you have diabetes, your lifetime risk of developing a foot ulcer is 15% or more, and about a quarter of diabetic foot ulcers fail to heal and eventually require amputation.
With an adult obesity rate of 26 percent, Washington now ranks as the 28th most obese state and is one of the 38 that have an adult obesity rate above 25 percent.
Benaroya Diabetes Center at Virginia Mason now offering new diabetes management classes called “Going for the Goal.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned today that potenially dangerous stolen vials of insulin are still on the market.
Last June, 129,000 vials of the long-acting insulin Levemir made by Novo Nordisk, Inc. were stolen in North Carolina.
Only 2 percent of the stolen vials have been recovered.
The FDA said it has received multiple reports [...]
FDA may require glucose monitors to be more accurate
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may soon require glucose monitors used by more than 11 million diabetics in the U.S. to be more accurate, Gardiner Harris reports in the New York Times.
Under current standards, these monitors can be off by as much as 20 percent putting [...]
Medtronic, Inc. is recalling some of its Paradigm Quick-set infusion sets used with its MiniMed Paradigm insulin pumps.
In a press release announcing the recall, the company said it recently discovered that approximately 2 percent of “Lot 8” Quick-set infusion sets may not work properly.
“The affected infusion sets may not allow the insulin pump to vent air [...]
Money and medicine
KUOW looks at the salaries of Seattle’s top docs and charity care Washington non-profit hospitals give
John Ryan, a reporter for Seattle’s Public Radio affiliate KUOW, looked at how much Seattle-area hospitals, most of which enjoy the tax benefits of non-profit status, pay their top officials and how much charity care they provide.
Salaries, Ryan [...]
Stolen vials of the long-acting insulin Levemir made by Novo Nordisk have reappeared and are now being sold in the U.S.. the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has learned.
The insulin may be dangerous because the vials may not have been stored and handled properly, the FDA warns.
Three lots or a total of 129,000 vials of [...]
Adolescents with type 1 diabetes who use insulin pumps achieve better blood-sugar levels than do adolescents who use other methods, according to a new study.
Those using insulin pumps also required fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits, the study found.
But even with the pump many children and teens still fail to achieve good blood-sugar control, the [...]
Today, more than one in ten Hispanics age 20 years and older has diabetes. The reasons for this are unknown. Diabetes can run in families, so heredity might play a role. Some researchers believe that certain ethnic groups carry a “thrifty gene”.
People with this gene would be better at storing up food as fat during [...]
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention has produced an animated video series to encourage Native American children to be active and eat right to reduce their risk of developing diabetes.
The series of four videos are based on the four Eagle Books written by Georgia Peres of Nambe Pueblo and illustrated by Partick [...]
Animas Corporation has issued an urgent recall of battery caps used with the following insulin pump products:
All Animas® 2020 Insulin Pumps shipped between June 16, 2008 through July 19, 2008
All Animas® IR 1200 and IR 1250 Insulin Pumps shipped between June 16, 2008 through August 1, 2008
All OneTouch® PingTM Glucose Management Systems shipped prior to August [...]
The maker of ReliOn insulin syringes is recalling one lot of its sterile, single-use, disposable, hypodermic syringes with permanently affixed needles due to possible mislabeling that may lead to patients receiving an overdose of as much as 2.5 times the intended dose, the U.S. Food and Drug Agency reports.
Here is the FDA alert:
FDA Reports Nationwide [...]
A conference held this July in Seattle on the ethics of genetic testing of newborns and children is now available online at UWTV’s website.
The 2008 Pediatric Bioethics Conference brought together some of the nation’s top ethicists to talk about the controversies involved in testing newborns and children for genetic conditions even when there might be [...]
In patients with type 1 diabetes, sometimes called juvenile-onset diabetes, tight control of blood sugars with insulin has been shown in clinical trials to reduce the risk of blindness, vascular disease and kidney problems that commonly develop with diabetes.
These findings have led scientists to think that tight control of blood sugars would also reduce the [...]
More U.S. children are taking prescription drugs for the treatment of asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and other chronic diseases, according to a new study.
The study, which appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics, looked at data from Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits management company that supplies prescription drugs to more [...]
Hoping to encourage patients to participate in clinical trials, the American Diabetes Association, the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association and the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research are holding a conference about research being conducted in the Seattle area.
The conference will include talks by local scientists as well as patients who have volunteered for research studies.
The [...]
Researchers from Seattle and Sweden met in Seattle last weekend to discuss the latest diabetes research
The annual Seattle-Sweden conferences are designed to highlight a number of collaborative projects between diabetes researchers working here and in Sweden.
This year’s conference, the 3rd Annual Seattle-Sweden Diabetes Awareness Day, was organized by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in collaboration with [...]
Invisible Families: The homeless you don't see
They squeeze in with relatives, couch surf with friends or camp out in cars. More families are quietly becoming homeless, driven to the edge by a lack of jobs and affordable housing. The Seattle Times and its local news partners tackle the topic together. Project home
E-Health Records: Seattle is ahead of the curve
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