Cleveland Clinic, Ohio
Dr. Mario Skugor on Diabetes Research at Cleveland Clinic
— -- Hello. Here in the Cleveland ClinicCleveland Clinic, we take care of many patients with different types of diabetes. However, most of our patients have type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is characterized by increased insulin resistance, and it is a major healthcare problem in modern societies. The major consequence of type 2 diabetes is development of atherosclerosis, which leads to many heart attacks and strokes, and indeed many of our patients die from those two causes.
The goal of treatment for diabetes is to prevent those bad outcomes. To achieve this, we have to achieve more than just controlled blood sugar. We have to control cholesterol, and our goals for treatment are to have LDL cholesterol, or bad cholesterol, at less than 100 milligrams per deciliter. Then, another goal for treatment is to control the blood pressure, and blood pressure goal is to be at less than 130 over 80 millimeters of mercury.
And finally, we also aim to control blood sugar. To follow the blood sugar control, we use the number called hemoglobin A1C, that is the number that tells us what was the average blood sugar over last three months. We aim to keep that number below 7 percent, or as some professional societies advise, to less than 6.5 percent. When we are able to control all those three aspects of diabetes, the risks of the patients with diabetes are very close to those of the normal population.
Related Stories
ABC News Live