April 5, 2018 – Five Categories

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Should type 2 diabetes be subcategorized? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Type 2 diabetes should be divided into five subtypes, each with different characteristics and likely to respond to different management strategies. That’s according to a recent study in the Lancet. Rita Kalyani, a diabetes expert at Johns Hopkins, says such classification may be helpful for physicians.

Kalyani: We know that people with type 2 diabetes develop complications at different rates, some of them benefit from certain therapies where others benefit from other therapies. And so what the authors tried to do in this study was see if there was a way to identify clusters or categories of different subtypes of type 2 diabetes in an effort to predict what treatments they might benefit from and also what complications they might be at risk for.  :30

Kalyani says the study is a move toward personalized medicine, but thinks integration of other diseases and conditions a patient might have will also be important in determining best management. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.