Monday, October 31, 2011

Using Muffins To Detect Diabetes


October 31st, 2011 by Ryan Luce No Comments

written by Michael O’Leary
“Fast all night and eat a muffin in the morning,” might be your doctor’s orders for testing whether you have type 2 diabetes someday according to researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
That’s what a subset of 73 women taking part in a menopausal hormone therapy trial, were told after a 10-hour fasting blood draw to assess their two-hour glucose levels. (Link to published site)

The researchers led by Dr. Michael Traub, wanted to see if testing for diabetes with a more pleasant tasting muffin might be as accurate as a standardized sugary solution currently used to test glucose tolerance. Traub told Reuters Health that in his experience many people hate the taste of the glucose drink and others feel ill afterwards.
In the study, 73 women aged 42 to 58, who were less than 36 months after menopause were participating in the KRONOS Early Estrogen Prevention Study Trial were asked to fast for 10 hours before undergoing a blood draw. The women were then given a muffin and a beverage. Two hours later their blood glucose levels were checked.  A comparison group of 12 of these women underwent the standard overnight glucose tolerance test. The study was published in the journal Menopause last month.
They found that the muffin test and overnight glucose tolerance test levels were comparable, with the two-hour glucose levels being slightly higher for those in the muffin test group compared to the overnight glucose test group.
Overall 8 of the 73 women were diagnosed with impaired glucose tolerance. The fasting blood draw test alone only identified 5 of the 8 women or 63 percent. The muffin test, however identified all 8 and didn’t identify any of the women who didn’t have impaired glucose tolerence, making it comparable to the gold standard overnight glucose tolerance test.
Whether the muffin test gains acceptance with doctors however, will require a much bigger study to determine that it is as accurate as was shown in this study, even then it might not make it to your doctor’s office. As quoted in the Reuters Health report, one doctor questions the ability of doctors to get a nationwide standardized muffin for testing purposes.
Traub and his team noted that the muffin test is cheaper than the five-dollar bottle of glucose solution, and it didn’t give any of the women the stomach upset that the solution sometimes causes.  Traub contends that even with reasonable variations in muffin type from place to place the test would likely give consistent results, but that would have to be part of a larger study.

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