This is a run down of everything I've seen and heard coming out of #EASD2022 today.
I've been attending EASD 2022 virtually on a scholarship from #dedoc and I have been tweeting and writing daily reports during the conference which you can read here: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
What does today's report cover?
I didn't tune in to quite as many talks as yesterday, but there is still plenty to talk about.
Once weekly insulins
"Saving our sweet souls"
Neuropathy talks on psychological treatment for pain management, and urologic complications
CGM for all debate
The new T1D Index
Let's dive in...
Summary of the sessions I joined today
Stefano Del Prato - taking once weekly insulins to the real world
I was looking forward to this talk as I'd heard about once weekly basal insulin being developed through social media and it was met by some in the diabetes online community with scepticism. Many of us have accidentally dosed the wrong amount of insulin via injection before but at least you know it wears off quite quickly. The idea of an insulin that works for a whole week...what if you get that wrong?
Well, the talks this morning presented some evidence that once weekly insulins perform as well as daily insulins without increasing hypos. This speaker was focused on the benefit for the patient in terms of reduced burden - why not take 52 injections a year instead of 365? More work to be done but it sounds promising, particularly for the T2D community.
Saving our sweet souls
I was happy to see a set of talks focused on the psychosocial aspects of living with diabetes and I dipped into a couple of these. The topics were varied and interesting:
Kevin Marks's talk was about asking caregivers the right questions in the right way about diabetes management to get insights into the likely trajectories of HbA1c in children and adolescents.
Judita Konečná's talk looked at diabetes distress and personality traits. It was quite a complex talk that wasn't really accessible to a non specialist. It did, however, strike a chord as a person living with Type 1 Diabetes when she broke down diabetes distress into its different component parts: emotional burden, physician distress, regimen distress and interpersonal distress. Phew, it is really hard sometimes.
Neuropathy talks on psychological treatment for pain management, and urologic complications
Francois Pouwer's talk was called Psychological aspects as therapeutic target: not just the pain but the whole person. He talked about the potential for psychological therapies delivered online to help people suffering from pain. These could be delivered at scale and translated into multiple different languages. It was acknowledged in the Q&A discussion that there aren't enough psychologists (or enough money) available to treat patients individually and this could be a good alternative solution. Suggestions were made for areas where more research is needed.
Aruna V. Sarma's talk was advertised as being about female sexual dysfunction but was delivered on the broader topic of Urologic Complications.
Some interesting points were raised in the Q&A - one was that these complications arose in quite young people (40s) and typically earlier than other diabetes related complications. One point raised was: could younger people be motivated to try hard to manage their blood sugars as best they can so they protect their sexual function for longer?
It was also acknowledged that female sexual dysfunction has a significant impact on quality of life - Sarma said more so than from other diabetes related complications - yet we still don't know enough about it and we don't talk about it enough (patients or clinicians).
CGM for all? The debate
This debate came down to looking at CGMs for people with Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes and healthy people without diabetes. Do I think everyone should have a CGM, diabetes or not? Of course not!
The Yes side of the debate makes the case for Type 1...and Type 2s.
From what I've seen from the reactions online, people with type 1 diabetes are not big fans of people without diabetes using CGMs. It's a very thorny issue at the moment for all sorts of reasons. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds in future as wearable health tech continues to develop for the general population.
T1D Index
I couldn't finish today's roundup without flagging the new T1D Index.
Launched by the JDRF yesterday, which says it is
"a first-of-its-kind data simulation tool that provides the most accurate and comprehensive global picture of type 1 diabetes in history."
An amazing tool and a compelling call to action. Definitely worth a look.
Great week coming to an end
As #EASD2022 is drawing to a close, I wanted to thank the dedoc organisation for the scholarship to attend the conference this week. This wouldn't have been possible without the generous support of their industry partners.
Thanks for tuning in this week!
Twitter: @dedocORG
Twitter: @EASDnews
Twitter: @MichelleLawT1D