“Why are we calling this diabetes? These patients have repeated bouts of acute illness. The CF patient you’re seeing today in the hospital may very well be back in 5 months, and again 2 months after that. It’s a frequent event in these patients, and when their diabetes persists for longer than 48 hours it tends to persist for weeks before their need for insulin goes away until the next time they get sick. But most of these patients spend a substantial amount of time each year hyperglycemic. And most importantly, if you use as your date of diagnosis diabetes that’s present at the time of an acute illness, it correlates with microvascular complications and with mortality. So it establishes a meaningful start point for future risk,” Dr. Moran said.
She reported financial relationships with Novo Nordisk and Vertex.