January 30, 2023
2 min read
Source/Disclosures
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Disclosures:
Liu reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle — before or after type 2 diabetes diagnosis — was associated with significantly lower risk for microvascular complications for people with the disease, according to study data.
Results were published in JAMA Network Open.
“The evidence regarding the association between combined healthy lifestyle before and after diabetes diagnosis and the subsequent risk of microvascular complications remains scarce,” Gang Liu, PhD, from the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues wrote in study background. “In addition, it remains unclear whether improvements in lifestyle practice from before to after diabetes diagnosis are associated with risks of microvascular events.”
Researchers examined diet and lifestyle factors before and after diabetes diagnosis among 7,077 adults with type 2 diabetes (mean age, 61 years; 68.7% women) who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer. All participants completed the diabetes supplementary questionnaires in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. Healthy lifestyles were defined as not smoking, having a healthy body weight, engaging in moderate to vigorous physical activity, consuming a high-quality diet