ACCORD Revisited

 In 2008, the results of the ACCORD "landmark" trial were published and were interpreted by some to mean that people with diabetes shouldn't get their blood glucose (BG) levels down to normal or below. This is because those whose diabetes was treated aggressively in this trial had greater mortality than those with less aggressive treatment.

Sadly, some physicians used these results to urge their patients to have higher hemoglobin A1c levels. Patients were reporting on diabetes lists that their doctors told them that their normal A1c levels were too low and they should get them up.

Careful analysis showed that in fact, the patients with increased mortality were those who used very aggressive treatment but despite this did not lower their A1c. So they had harm from the treatment without compensating benefit from lower BG levels. Those who got aggressive treatment and did lower their A1c got benefit.

"It has been recognized that patients treated intensively in ACCORD who attained a lower HbA1c had reduced risk of death compared to those treated intensively with little HbA1c reduction."

Unfortunately, these analyses did not get the wide publicity that the initial results did, so many busy physicians may not have read about them.

Now a new analysis of ACCORD  says that there is a subtype of type 2 that shows real benefit from intensive glycemic treatment.

Now, most patients will not be given genetic tests to determine if they are in this subgroup. And there might be other subgroups that these researchers did not study. However the analysis suggests that you should not accept without question the results of big studies of diabetes patients as applying to you. They probably will, but they might not.

If you're a physician, you need to work on the assumption that big trial results will apply to most of your patients, so you start by following their recommendations. But most of us aren't treating others, so what we really care about his how some approach will affect us.

This means we should test as much as we can, not just BG levels but other factors that affect our health, to see what works for us. We're fortunate these days because if we can afford it, we have access to a  lot of tests.

Stay informed. Read about the latest big studies. But read them critically and try to figure out if they make sense for you. Try what they suggest is beneficial, but don't apply the suggestions blindly.

In the long run, we have to be in charge of our health.