Today.com
by Mary Elizabeth Gillis

A recent study by the Mayo Clinic estimated about 20 percent of diabetes patients are treated too intensively with medicines or insulin, which led to thousands of hospital visits for hypoglycemia. “This is a big problem ... and it’s been around for many years now and unfortunately the number [of cases] hasn’t budged much in the past ten years,” Rozalina McCoy, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic and co-author of the new study, told TODAY. McCoy and her team at the Mayo Clinic noticed the concerning trend and wanted to find out more. They examined data from more than 10.2 million people with diabetes between 2011 and 2014 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and the OptumLabs Data Warehouse and found about 2.3 million had likely been overtreated.

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Context: For people with diabetes, taking medications and monitoring their blood sugar is part of the rhythm of their daily lives. However, according to new research from Mayo Clinic, more than 2.3 million adult patients in the U.S. are likely treated too intensively. This has caused thousands of potentially preventable emergency department visits and hospitalizations for hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). You can read more about the research on Mayo Clinic News Network.

Contact: Elizabeth Zimmerman

Tags: diabetes, Dr. Rozalina McCoy, hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, OptumLabs, today.com, Uncategorized