But this reanalysis (which was presented at a diabetes meeting in June) still needs confirmation, says Dr. Victor Montori, a physician-researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. For his part, he thinks that tight glucose control may be getting far too much emphasis in the management of diabetes.
In an April paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine, he pointed to the dearth of benefits of tight glucose control in studies and advocated "good enough" glucose control instead. What this means would depend on the individual patient, Montori says, but would include weighing the benefits of sugar control against some of the undesirable effects of diabetes medications. Many of the drugs cause patients to gain weight, and they can often trigger hypoglycemia, a dip in blood sugar (to less than 70 mg/dL) that's accompanied by shaking, dizziness and sudden sweating.
