Promoting weight loss can delay the onset of type 2 diabetes by four years and has effects that last up to a decade, researchers found.
The study, published in The Lancet last week, was a follow-up of the Diabetes Prevention Program, a trial randomizing patients with impaired glucose tolerance or obesity to intensive lifestyle intervention, metformin or placebo.
It found type 2 diabetes incidence was delayed by twice as long with lifestyle interventions as the two years in patients prescribed metformin.
Incidence over 10 years fell by 34% in the lifestyle group and 18% with metformin compared with placebo.
Dr William Knowler, chief of diabetes epidemiology at the National Institute of Health in Phoenix, said it was feasible to "interrupt the worsening of hyperglycaemia in overweight and other at-risk patients."
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