Selph and colleagues' meta-analysis (1) asks whether screening for type 2 diabetes, impaired fasting glucose, or impaired glucose tolerance among asymptomatic adults improves health care outcomes. Unfortunately, the authors seem to have lost focus in their selection of a title and provide an unbalanced assessment on the troubling consequences of type 2 diabetes and its association with an excess of morbidities and deaths, disability, and a shortened lifespan (2). Pervasive in such unbalanced analyses is the formulaic concept that no true observation exists except for recent randomized, controlled trials.
To date, although strong evidence shows that improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes will reduce or delay the progression of microvascular disease, studies of macrovascular events done over decades in these patients have failed to show the same beneficial effect (3). The authors presume that evaluating cardiovascular events and mortality for a short period can determine the relative benefits of diabetes screening. Treatment of diabetes clearly reduces blindness and delays end-stage renal disease (4). Although some may consider loss of vision or renal function softer end points, they can be more debilitating than nonfatal cardiovascular events to our patients. Failure to screen even asymptomatic persons for diabetes creates a harm that this review does not imagine. Treatment of impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance also clearly delays the complications of diabetes.
As statistical analyses and meta-analyses become more complicated and populations studied and morbidities and deaths more limited, study results may derive fewer benefits and may inadvertently create risk for harm. Such harm may be magnified if results are inappropriately generalized; morbidities and deaths are limited to 1 system, and the research becomes unfocused or underpowered. We believe that this review is an example.
Selph and colleagues' meta-analysis (1) asks whether screening for type 2 diabetes, impaired fasting glucose, or impaired glucose tolerance among asymptomatic adults improves health care outcomes. Unfortunately, the authors seem to have lost focus in their selection of a title and provide an unbalanced assessment on the troubling consequences of type 2 diabetes and its association with an excess of morbidities and deaths, disability, and a shortened lifespan (2). Pervasive in such unbalanced analyses is the formulaic concept that no true observation exists except for recent randomized, controlled trials.To date, although strong evidence shows that improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes will reduce or delay the progression of microvascular disease, studies of macrovascular events done over decades in these patients have failed to show the same beneficial effect (3). The authors presume that evaluating cardiovascular events and mortality for a short period can determine the relative benefits of diabetes screening. Treatment of diabetes clearly reduces blindness and delays end-stage renal disease (4). Although some may consider loss of vision or renal function softer end points, they can be more debilitating than nonfatal cardiovascular events to our patients. Failure to screen even asymptomatic persons for diabetes creates a harm that this review does not imagine. Treatment of impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance also clearly delays the complications of diabetes.As statistical analyses and meta-analyses become more complicated and populations studied and morbidities and deaths more limited, study results may derive fewer benefits and may inadvertently create risk for harm. Such harm may be magnified if results are inappropriately generalized; morbidities and deaths are limited to 1 system, and the research becomes unfocused or underpowered. We believe that this review is an example.
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