Welcome to the latest edition of US Endocrinology, which features a diverse range of articles covering several therapeutic areas. Diabetes represents a growing health burden worldwide, and this is reflected in a number of articles focusing on various aspects of the disease.
Diabetes self-management and education is an essential component of the therapy on this lifelong condition. In an expert interview, Linda Siminerio of Pittsburgh, US, a former International Diabetes Federation Vice President, discusses the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) new psychosocial position statement and the benefits of ongoing education and support. There is a need for simple teaching tools and informed decision-making shared between patient and practitioner. An editorial by Kalra describes a useful mnemonic, the ‘five Ms’—match, motivate, method, monitor, and modify—that may be used as a simple checklist to facilitate appropriate insulin use in type 2 diabetes.
While chronic hyperglycemia is largely responsible for the microvascular and macrovascular complications, the role of other glycemic variations should not be underestimated. Marcovecchio discusses the importance of acute hyperglycemia and intra-day glucose variability in inducing tissue damage. Fasting during Ramadan has important implications for the management of Muslim patients with diabetes. Al Slail et al. present a focus group discussion assessing physician awareness of how best to manage patients with diabetes during Ramadan.
Also in this edition, Lardinois discusses the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk inherent in patients with chronic kidney disease. In particular, the combination of hyperfiltration and albumin-to-creatinine ratio are associated with a heightened risk of CHD.
Finally, this edition features two articles on thyroid cancer. In the first, Bates and Sippel discuss tools and markers that can be used to improve surgical quality in thyroid cancer. In addition, Nabhan et al. describe a case of a patient with the rare combination of right thyroid hemiagenesis, lingual thyroid, and papillary thyroid cancer.
US Endocrinology would like to thank all expert authors who contributed towards this edition. A special thanks goes to our Editorial Board for their continuing support and guidance. We hope that you will find these topical articles useful and insightful.
