subject: Lifestyle-based Diabetes Prevention Seen To Endure For At Least A Decade [print this page] A number of prospective studies have shown that behavioral and lifestyle interventions can provide lasting protection against new type 2 diabetes in people at increased risk, but the question remains: For how long? What might be the longest follow-up yet of patients from such a randomized controlled trial comes this week from the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) Research Group, which saw protective effects of both lifestyle intervention and treatment with metformin last as long as 10 years .Their findings, now published online in theLancet, come from an unblinded, extended follow-up of most patients from the original DPP, published in 2002 , that compared an intensive lifestyle intervention program with metformin or placebo in 3234 nondiabetic patients with elevated fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance.As reported by heartwire at the time, the rate of new diabetes (defined according to American Diabetes Association criteria) fell by 58% with intensive lifestyle intervention and by 31% with metformin only, compared with placebo, over a mean of 2.8 years (p
