PREVENTION OF DIABETES AIM

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32114, 9 October 1969, Page 18

PREVENTION OF DIABETES AIM

A way of preventing diabetes might be discovered within 30 years, said Professor A. Renold, a world authority on the subject, in Christchurch last evening.

Professor Renold, director of the Institute of Chemical Biochemistry at the University at Geneva, said that a major advance might occur any day. In a public address arranged by the Christchurch Diabetic Society and the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, Professor Renold explained that diabetes had

been with mankind for almost 4000 years. The first advance was in 1889 when it was found that the pancreas might be the centre of the disorder; the second major advance was in 1924 when insulin was discovered. Professor Renold said that prevention was a logical goal. An analysis of the manufacture of insulin, its storage and release within the body and a study of the relationship between the disorder and the environment might provide clues to solving the problem.

Diabetes in the older age group was largely associated with obesity, he said. With the aid of charts he showed bow in Britain the incidence of diabetes had increased until the First World War when food rationing caused it to decrease. After the war it again rose until the Second World War and a longer period of food rationing which caused a steady decline. Almost everywhere in the Western world where food was relatively plentiful and where man did not have to work hard physically diabetes was increasing. Doctors would have to make the population realise that diabetes was one of the disadvantages of the socalled soft life.