Insulin May Help Prevent Diabetes, Study Indicates

Preliminary studies indicate that giving doses of insulin can delay the development of insulin-dependent diabetes in people who are at high risk of the disease, researchers said Saturday.

A large-scale study is under way to determine how often and for how long insulin can delay the onset of Type I diabetes, which occurs most often in children and young adults.

The disease affects the metabolism of sugars and can cause such complications as blindness and kidney failure.

The researchers discussed their efforts at a meeting of the American Diabetes Assn., which estimates that Type I diabetes affects 700,000 people in the United States.

“If I was going to guess what’s going to happen, I hope that we prevent more than 50% [of Type I diabetes cases] over five years, delay things five to 10 years,” said Dr. George Eisenbarth, of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diseases. “And there will be a subset who perhaps won’t ever develop diabetes, but we won’t know that for a very long time.” If insulin treatment can delay the onset of diabetes for five years, “that’s a tremendous time in the lifetime of a child.”