A study presented at the American Diabetes Association's annual meeting found no significant difference in hypoglycemia-related emergency visits and hospital admissions between patients with type 2 diabetes who initiated with long-acting basal insulin analog and those who initiated with human neutral protamine Hagedorn insulin. The findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association, based on data from 4,428 patients, "suggest that the use of basal insulin analogs in usual practice settings may not be associated with clinical advantages for these outcomes," researchers said.

A study in Diabetes Care showed that diabetes patients who used HypoAware, a partly web-based educational intervention tool, had 33% fewer severe hypoglycemia episodes and a significantly reduced risk of impaired hypoglycemia awareness after six months, compared with those who received usual care. Dutch researchers used a cohort of 137 insulin-treated patients with problematic hypoglycemia and found those in the HypoAware group experienced an average of one severe hypoglycemic event over the study period, compared with 2.5 events in the control group, and had less hypo-distress than the usual care group.

A study in Diabetes Care showed that patients with type 2 diabetes who experienced remission after undergoing bariatric surgery had a lower risk of incident microvascular disease than those who did not experience remission. Researchers analyzed data from a cohort of 4,683 type 2 diabetes patients who underwent bariatric surgery from 2001 to 2011 and found a reduction in the risk of microvascular disease for every additional year spent in remission before relapse.

Dr. Yul Ejnes, MD, chair emeritus of the American College of Physicians board of regents, says his practice's adoption of the medical home model and eventually becoming an accountable care organization has improved his "practice satisfaction tremendously." Under the model, his team is holding for weekly care conferences, discussing high-risk patients and working to manage pharmaceutical costs, creating an environment for meaningful patient care, he says.

Researchers found that adolescents with type 2 diabetes had differences in gray matter in regions of the brain involved with emotions, decision-making, seeing and hearing, speech, memory and self-control, compared with adolescents without diabetes. The findings, presented at the American Diabetes Association's annual meeting, were based on brain scans involving 40 youths with and without diabetes.