More Americans Successfully Managing Diabetes

But large U.S. government study shows there's a lot of room for improvement to prevent complications

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- A couple of decades ago, only 2 percent of people with any type of diabetes met or exceeded the three measures of good diabetes management. By 2010, that number had risen to 19 percent, according to new government research.

These measures of good diabetes management are average blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. When researchers looked at each measure independently, more than half of people in the study met individual measures.

"Overall, there was a huge improvement between 1988 and 2010. These findings are very encouraging. However, only 19 percent of people were meeting all three goals," said senior study author Catherine Cowie, director of the Diabetes Epidemiology Program at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

One expert had mixed reactions to the study results.