osteoporosis drug may reduce diabetes risk

the research, presented this week at the annual conference of the european association for the study of diabetes , found the drug became more effective the longer it was used and reduced the risk of a diabetes diagnosis by 53 per cent in people who had been taking it for at least eight years, compared to those who had not. the study was prompted by previous work that found people with diabetes are more prone to suffer fractures and more recent research linking bone quality to blood sugar regulation.

“thus, we speculated that the treatment of osteoporosis might impact on the risk of type 2 diabetes,” said rikke viggers , one of the authors of the study from aalborg university hospital in aalborg, denmark.

one in three canadians  are currently living with prediabetes or diabetes, a disease in which one’s body does not produce insulin or does not properly use the insulin it does produce,  according to diabetes canada . diabetes has long been thought to increase the risk of infection because the disease weakens the immune system’s ability to stop the spread of problematic pathogens — a concerning risk factor in the age of covid-19. in addition to a reduced lifespan, diabetics face an increased chance of vision problems, hospitalization for amputations, heart failure, strokes and kidney failure.

there are more people living with diabetes in ontario than anywhere else in canada , with the rates of type 1 and type 2 having risen by 42 per cent in just over a decade. the national economic burden of treating the disease was $30-billion in 2019, an increase of $14-billion since 2009.

dave yasvinski is a writer with  healthing.ca

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osteoporosis drug may reduce diabetes risk

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