What was the Diabetes Prevention Program?

The Diabetes Prevention Program was a study to find out how diabetes responds to various types of treatment. Endocrinologist Jack Merendino, MD, explains the discoveries that resulted from that program.

Transcript

00:00

The point of the study was to take a group of people who were at high risk, to make some changes in how they were managed,

00:08

and to see what the result was in terms of the likelihood of progressing to diabetes. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:23

The Diabetes Prevention Program was a large trial that was undertaken with government funding in the mid-1990s.

00:30

And it went on for about 10 years or so. People were recruited into the trial who had prediabetes.

00:37

And the point of the study was to take a group of people who were at high risk, to make some changes in how they were managed,

00:45

and to see what the result was in terms of the likelihood of progressing to diabetes.

00:51

There were basically three groups. One group was simply observed to see what the natural history would be. One group was helped with diet and exercise

01:01

and told to make those changes. On average, they lost about 5% of their body weight. And the third group was given a medication

01:09

called metformin, which is usually the first-line treatment for diabetes. The results were really amazing because if you looked

01:16

at the metformin group, over the next 10 years the likelihood of those people progressing to diabetes was cut by about a third.

01:24

But if you looked at the people who made lifestyle changes, they cut their diabetes risk by about 2/3. So it turned out to be even more powerful than medication.