Welcome to 2013 – a year which promises to be very exciting for people living with diabetes and for those of us caring for them. 

What makes me excited about a new year?  Each New Year brings us more information about how we can best manage diabetes and provide support and education for those living with the disease – that is why 2013 is so exciting! 

In April we will see the launch of the new Canadian Diabetes Association Clinical Practice Guidelines, which I have mentioned in a previous blog. The Guidelines are the road map of care for health care professionals dealing with diabetes.  They are designed for all health care providers, including doctors, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, exercise therapists, social workers and psychologists, to name a few, as well as specialists in areas related to diabetes care such as cardiologists and nephrologists.  Most importantly, they are designed for the health care professional who has to be all of these for one patient, where services are lacking. 

What makes this year’s Guidelines so exciting, is that we will be launching these in an exciting way, ensuring that people living with diabetes are also part of the target audience.  This means that individuals with diabetes can understand what the standard of care should be and can gain knowledge about how to care for themselves and where to access care.  We want people with diabetes to become their own advocates for the best possible diabetes care and management.

Each New Year also brings the promise of new treatments and new research findings.  We are particularly excited that this year may bring a new class of medications to the market, called the SGLT-2 inhibitors, as well as new longer-acting insulin.

What is an SGLT-2 inhibitor and why is it exciting?  We learn more every day about why type 2 diabetes occurs and how it can be treated.  This new class of medications works to reduce the amount of glucose in the blood by increasing the amount of sugar lost in urine.  It seems a simple concept, but in all honesty, we are only really now learning the role that the kidney plays in diabetes management.  Basically, these medications help you to lose the equivalent of 1 can of sugared pop every day.

This new group of medications are taken once daily and when used alone do not cause low blood sugar.  They can lower A1c by almost 1% and can be added to most diabetes therapies. We will need to wait to see when Health Canada approves the medications and provides more information as to how they will be used.  The side effects include yeast infections and urinary tract infections, so for those people who already have difficulty with these issues, this may not be the drug of choice. Also exciting is that there has been consistent weight loss in all the clinical trials.  More to follow – but truly exciting.

What about the insulin toolbox?  It looks pretty good doesn’t it?  In fact we have seen several new insulins come to market in the last 10 years – longer-acting insulins and faster-acting insulins.  They are great, but we will always continue to try to achieve insulin actions that are identical to the human pancreas, while we wait for the cure.

We are hopeful to see a longer-acting insulin this year. This will be one that lasts about 40 hours and yet is still given every day around the same time but with a bit of flexibility.  For example, if you were going out with friends to a movie and you normally take long-acting insulin at 11:00 pm, you could safely take this insulin either before going out or after coming home and it would still be as effective.  Compared to current long-acting insulin already on the market, the newer insulin appears to cause less low blood sugar overnight as well.

So 2013, stay tuned – we hope it is a good one!!