LI Physician Leads Research on the Effects of Type 1 Diabetes on the Brain

According to the IDF Diabetes Atlas, the overall population of the world is more than 7.2 billion, and it is expected to rise to 8.7 billion in 2035. According to IDF, 382 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have diabetes, and almost half of the entire adults with diabetes are between the ages of 40 and 59 years old, which is also the age range wherein people are at their most active phase in life.

Diabetes is expected to be the main cause of over 5.1 million deaths in adults that aged between 20 and 79 in 2015, and almost 48% of those deaths are people ages 60 years old and below. Diabetes is ranked as the leading cause of premature death around the world, and these deaths show about 8.4% of adults from ages 20 to 79. The deaths due to this disease are continuously increasing and the estimated total number of death in 2015 represent 11% increase in the expected count in since 2011.

Diabetes is a serious trend that must be prevented, especially for young adults. Because there is no cure for the disease, diabetics need to look after their health attentively by controlling it with proper exercise, medications, and diet.

Recently, a multi-year federal grant from NIH sourced out the best Long Island researcher in the primary study of diabetes.  According to the reports, the chief researcher of NYU Winthrop Hospital, Alan Jacobson, already secured almost $4.23 million from the National Institute of Health. This is to understand the long-term neurocognitive effects of type 1 diabetes. The grant runs for five years and aims to help Jacobson learn more about this disease. 

Later on, this will be utilized by EDIC, or also known as Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions & Complications. It is an international study, as well as a long-term follow up to the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, a well-known research performed by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease of NIH.

In connection to that, DCCT modified the diabetes treatment protocols as they monitored more or less 1,442 volunteers from Canada and United States from 1983 to 1993. Then EDIC decided to continue where it left off and tracked about 90% of the original participants. These volunteers were known to suffer from type 1 diabetes alone so that they could identify the long-term effects of diabetes itself and its myriad of treatments.

It is important to dive deeper into the condition that affects almost 1.25 millions of American people, as well as more than 422 million people all over the world (stats are from World Health Organization in  2014) who suffer from the type 1 diabetes. This is particularly for those who are currently at risk of getting cardiovascular and microvascular complications, which may result in another illness or worse, death.