BOSTON (Reuters) - Regular insulin shots do not delay or prevent childhood-onset diabetes, according to a new study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine that appears to dash hopes that the hormone can keep children from developing the blood-sugar disease.

"In persons at high risk of diabetes, insulin at the dosage used in this study does not delay or prevent type 1 diabetes," said Dr. Jay Skyler of the University of Miami, who led a team of researchers in the nine-year study.

Diabetes, a chronic illness characterized by raised blood sugar levels, is the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States and will claim more than 210,000 lives this year, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Type 1 diabetes, which makes up around 10% of all cases, usually develops in children or young adults and currently afflicts between 850,000 and 1.7 million Americans.

The study's findings contradict research published in 1993 and 1998 that raised hopes the shots might prevent diabetes. In the aftermath of those studies, which involved small groups of people, some doctors began giving insulin as a preventive measure to patients at risk for the disease.

The Skyler team had trouble finding patients for its research because they, or their doctors, believed pilot studies had already established that the treatment was effective.

As it turns out, it is not.

The researchers identified 339 youngsters with an average age of 12 who had a 50-50 risk of developing diabetes over the next five years. Half were given twice-daily shots of 0.25 units of insulin for every kilogram (1.6 pounds) they weighed, plus annual infusions of insulin over a four-day period. The rest were put under close observation.

They found that 70 of the youngsters who were not treated developed diabetes, but so did 69 who received the shots.

The findings, Skyler said, not only show the therapy doesn't work but also suggest doctors should not prescribe treatments only "on the basis of small pilot studies."

Reference Source 89

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