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Intestinal
Ills More Common in Diabetics
Excerpt
by Merritt McKinney, Reuters Health
NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - People with diabetes often have gastrointestinal
symptoms such as incontinence and nausea, according to a report.
But the frequent stomach and intestinal troubles may be a result
of poor control of blood sugar rather than a side effect of diabetes
medications, researchers suggest.
Gastrointestinal
symptoms such as heartburn, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
and constipation have been thought to occur in diabetics more
frequently than in people without the disease, but evidence supporting
the link has been mixed.
Dr. Peter
Bytzer of the University of Sydney in Australia and colleagues
examined the rate of gastrointestinal maladies in a survey sent
to 15,000 adults. More than 400 of the nearly 8,700 people who
responded to the survey, or about 5%, reported having diabetes.
After the
researchers took into account age and sex, they found that diabetics
were more likely than people without the disease to have had any
of 16 gastrointestinal symptoms and five groups of symptoms. Three
symptoms--fecal incontinence, nausea and difficulty swallowing--were
much more common in diabetics.
For instance,
nearly 13% of diabetics reported being incontinent, compared with
only about 4% of people who did not have the disease, according
to the report in the September 10th issue of the journal Archives
of Internal Medicine.
Neither the
length of time a person had had diabetes nor the type of disease--type
1 or 2--seemed to affect the risk of gastrointestinal symptoms,
the report indicates.
But glycemic
control--how well a person with diabetes keeps his or her blood
sugar under control--was related to the likelihood of gastrointestinal
problems, Bytzer and colleagues found. Participants who reported
having poor glycemic control were more likely to have intestinal
symptoms than diabetics who reported being able to keep their
blood sugar under control.
Although the
study was not designed to determine how poor glycemic control
might increase gastrointestinal symptoms, the authors suggest
a possible explanation. They point out that hyperglycemia, or
high blood sugar, is known to affect the gastrointestinal system.
For example, high levels of blood sugar can promote feelings of
nausea, they note.
SOURCE:
Archives of Internal Medicine 2001;161:1989-1996.
Reference
Source 89
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