ACCORD Trial Makes News
Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a major change in the ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) study - a large-scale North American trial with over 10,000 participants. One arm of the trial, which examined the impact of intensively-controlled type 2 diabetes management (i.e., an A1C goal of less than 6%) in preventing cardiovascular complications, was stopped eighteen months early. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) found that type 2 ACCORD participants at high risk for heart attack and stroke who were placed in the intensive diabetes management group had an increased risk of death compared with their peers who were placed in a less-intensive standard treatment (i.e., A1C of 7 to 7.9%) group. It's important to note that the increased risk was slight, and was specific to only a subset of patients who had two or more risk factors for heart disease outside of diabetes or who had pre-existing heart disease upon entering the study.
Read more about the ACCORD changes here.