Saturday, January 30, 2010

Who pays the piper. Ignorant or bent?

Let's go back to 2006. Black and Hunter produced this paper with this as the final line of the abstract:

"In this study, a high-sucrose intake as part of an eucaloric, weight-maintaining diet had no detrimental effect on insulin sensitivity, glycemic profiles, or measures of vascular compliance in healthy nondiabetic subjects"

This statement is incorrect. The victims started with a fasting blood glucose of 4.8mmol/l, normal, and ended up as pre-diabetics with a FBG of 5.6mmol/l (discussed here). The glycaemic profile was NOT free of detrimental effect of either intervention diet. The only mystery was whether Hunter's group was ignorant of the concept of pre diabetes or bent. Now, if we go to the results section of the 2009 paper by Bradley and Hunter, currently under discussion, we can find this line:

"Although glucose tolerance tests were not performed, the mean fasting plasma glucose of 5.6 mmol/l was in the pre-diabetes range, consistent with an increased risk for development of diabetes."

Which seems to nicely answer that question. I particularly like both studies having exactly 5.6mmol/l as the value cited. A pure fluke, but so informative....

Ignorant or bent? You decide!

Peter

1 comment:

Matt Stone said...

I just find it funny that they actually spent good money studying whether or not sucrose can induce higher fasting blood sugars.

They should do a study to determine if the pope is Catholic or if water boils at 100 C at sea level.