Better blood sugar control in teens may reduce diabetes-related brain damage

Tightly controlling blood sugar in teens with type 1 diabetes may help reduce the disease's damaging effects on the brain, even in younger children, according to a study published online today in Nature Communications.

The proof-of-concept pilot study is the most detailed study on this topic to date and was led by researchers from Nemours Children's Health Center, Jacksonville, and Stanford University School of Medicine

"These results raise hope that the damage of type 1 diabetes to the developing brain may be reversed by tight glucose control," said the paper's senior author and co-principal investigator, Pediatrics at Nemours Children's Health Association Jacksonville Chapter said Dr.

The study was conducted through the five-centre Childhood Diabetes Research Network (DirecNet)

Dr.

Rational and consistent use of a hybrid closed-loop insulin delivery system can prolong the time when blood sugar is in a healthy range

The participants who used the closed-loop glucose control system showed greater improvements than the standard-of-care group in key brain markers indicative of normal teenage brain development -- in other words, their results were closer to those of the teens without diabetes

"We have known for some time that better control of blood sugar levels in people with type 1 diabetes can prevent or reduce damage to many biological systems (e.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas

This research was supported by grants from the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (5R01-HD-078463) and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation