India Reverses Diabetes type 2

In India, diabetes type 2 is highly endemic. India has an estimated 74 million diabetes type 2 patients. A Dutch lifestyle program (Keer Diabetes2 Om, developed by Voeding Leeft) was localised to the Indian culture and cuisine and successfully ran in a rural patient population in Assam province and an urban patient population in the city of Jaipur.  

The project was successful in the urban population and showed that the 3-month lifestyle program reduced 60% of the participant’s blood glucose (HbA1C) by more than 10%. Patients adhered well to the program and demonstrated a significant improvement in health and perceived wellbeing. Further, 64 out of the 181 intervention group participants reduced their diabetes medication use. This positive effect is expected to increase were the program to run for a longer period of time. 

However, the urban arm of the program was not successful. As patients in Jaipur preferred - and thus were facilitated with - a one-on-one program rather than a group based program as it was originally designed, the participants lacked the social peer support essential to make the program a success. The busy lifestyles of the urban elite with conflicting priorities may also have led to the limited effect of the program in the urban setting. 

In addition to the positive impact on health and wellbeing, the program also sought to generate a robust data set. On the basis of this data set, a set of predictors can be determined which will allow for predicting whether a particular patient will respond well to the program or not. In the urban population a mobile app was used for capturing data during the program, whereas in the rural population data was captured on a manual basis. The use of the app proved to be limited while manual data collection worked well.