The study gives further weight to the lifestyle advice currently recommended for the control of diabetes, says Professor Lars Ryden (Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden), ESC Spokesperson for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, who adds: "Treatment of type 2 diabetes should always be initiated with structured life-style advice. This is clearly highlighted in the ESC/EASD Guidelines for diabetes, pre-diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Results from the JAMA study suggest that such advice may be as effective as some drug interventions

"The JAMA study also shows that a well balanced diet will improve not only blood glucose tolerance but also blood lipid levels, which are of great importance in decreasing cardiovascular complications. If drugs are still needed in these circumstances, their dose and number may be lower.

"Subjects with type 2 diabetes should also be aware that it is important to avoid excess weight, and the diet described in the study may help achieve this goal."

Speaking specifically about the study Professor Joep Perk (Oskarshamn District Hospital, Sweden), an ESC spokesperson on the subject of cardiovascular prevention, said that the study was of relatively short duration (six months) in 210 patients; a diet high in low-glycemic foods resulted in a modest decrease in HbA1c levels when compared to a high-cereal fibre diet.

"The main finding of the study “ a significant increase of HDL levels and a greater reduction in the LDL/HDL ratio - may provide the rationale for long-term interventional studies. However, in the absence of these studies it is still premature to change the current practice of dietary counseling for type 2 diabetes patients," said Professor Perk.

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Using standard modeling methods, the investigators were able to calculate multicompartmental pharmacokinetic parameters for the two different nanoparticles. Although the data showed that the overall blood levels of the two nanoparticles were nearly identical over the course of the experiment, the imaging results showed clearly that the amount of targeted nanoparticle at the aorta was double that of the untargeted nanoparticle, a result that is impossible to determine using standard ADME techniques. The researchers note that measuring local ADME characteristics with MRI, in addition to determining whole-body averaged results using blood samples, should become increasingly important as more targeted nanoparticles move toward human clinical trials.

This study, which was detailed in the paper "Nanoparticle pharmacokinetic profiling in vivo using magnetic resonance imaging," was supported by the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a comprehensive initiative designed to accelerate the application of nanotechnology to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. Investigators from Philips Medical Systems and the University of Missouri Research Reactor also participated in this study. An abstract of this paper is available at the journal's Web site. View abstract

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