If possible reductions in medication use and cost can motivate patients to make lifestyle changes, the long-term goals of better health and quality of life can be achieved

• Action for Health and Diabetes investigators recently reported beneficial effects of 1 year of intensive lifestyle intervention on weight loss, glycemic control, and cardiovascular risk factors.
• This has important implications for long-term morbidity and mortality.

• In the short term, however, the current study demonstrates that intensive lifestyle intervention can reduce medication use and costs, both of which could be a far stronger motivation for individual patients to undertake lifestyle changes than a small decrease in A1c levels.
• Furthermore, because lifestyle interventions reduce diabetes incidence among at-risk patients well after the active interventions have ceased, the current findings could be extrapolated to suggest that glycemic control among patients with diagnosed diabetes may also endure beyond active intervention.
• Long-term follow-up of the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study showed a reduction in microvascular complications, myocardial infarction, and all-cause mortality risk even though glycemic control differences between intensive and standard control groups later equalized.
• If possible reductions in medication use and cost can motivate patients to make lifestyle changes, the long-term goals of better health and quality of life can be achieved.
• Furthermore, the current results have important implications for the cost-benefit ratio of providing lifestyle interventions; medication cost reductions must be factored in as an offset to the cost of the programs themselves.
• Lifestyle interventions can help bend the cost curve.

For further reading log on to
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/724315?src=mp&spon=34