More than three million Canadians and more than 422 million people worldwide live with type 2 diabetes. The World Health Organization recently warned that global rates of the disease have quadrupled since 1980, and the rate is expected to double again in the next 20 years, making the need for better understanding and treatment of type 2 diabetes increasingly urgent.
Dr. Ravi Retnakaran, an endocrinologist with Leadership Sinai Centre for Diabetes at Mount Sinai Hospital and an investigator at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, both part of Sinai Health System, is leading groundbreaking clinical research that could be a game-changer for future diabetes patients.
“Our quest is to better understand the factors that determine remission so that we can offer long term solutions for our patients,” said Dr. Retnakaran.
Along with colleagues at the Leadership Sinai Centre for Diabetes, Dr. Retnakaran is leading a major clinical trial called RESET IT, aimed at inducing remission in patients with diabetes by administering intensive short-term insulin therapy. Short-term intensive insulin therapy is typically administered for a period of two to four weeks and can decrease insulin resistance, reduce glucagonemia, improve pancreatic beta-cell function and, according to a new study by Dr. Retnakaran, induce a remission that can last up to one year in just under 50 per cent of patients.
Published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care, the study shows that early intervention with short-term intensive insulin therapy for four weeks can successfully induce a remission of type 2 diabetes that lasts for up to one year following treatment. The earlier that short- term intensive insulin therapy was administered after the diagnosis of diabetes, the more successful it was. In fact, the study showed that those who had been diagnosed within two years prior to receiving treatment had the longest sustained remission.
“The current study tells us that one key factor is early intervention with short-term insulin therapy during a window of opportunity that only exists in the first few years after diagnosis,” said Dr. Retnakaran.
Patients interested in participating in the RESET IT trial should contact: Ms. Haysook Choi at Mount Sinai Hospital at (416) 586-8778 or haysook.choi@sinaihealthsystem.ca.