News Article

News Article - impaired hypoglycemia awareness, hypoglycemia-induced brain damage, and fear of hypoglycemia

Nicole Meinel of the Diabetic Hypoglycemia Editorial Team

Diabetic Hypoglycemia June 2011, Volume 4, Issue 1: page 15-18

Impaired hypoglycemia awareness

People with impaired awareness of hypoglycemia have defective symptomatic and counter-regulatory responses to hypoglycemia, in particular an impaired epinephrine response. As avoiding hypoglycemia episodes has been shown to increase awareness of hypoglycemia and improve the epinephrine response, Ly et al evaluated whether real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) could help avoidance of hypoglycemia by alerting an individual to low plasma glucose levels. The group found a significant improvement in the epinephrine response at the end of the 4-week study in adolescent patients using CGM, but not in controls who used fingerstick testing only, suggesting that CGM can improve impaired hypoglycemia awareness.