Trial for Leicester Uni

[alisonz]

Just wondering if anyone else on here has been asked to do a trial for Leicester University?
My practice DSN asked me to do this trial, it lasts a year and its for T2 diabetics. Apparently they want to see if T2 on Metformin have hypo's. I have been given a nice new meter (don't like the finger pricker though so use my old one) and have to keep a note of various tests, what time, bg etc. This diary gets sent off once a month and if I feel any kind of hypo symptom regardless of bg level I fill in another form and send that in too.
When asked to do this I thought "what the heck, it can't do any harm" and actually it's doing me a lot of good as I am testing every day at different times when my DSN wanted me to cut back on testing and I was going off the rails a bit, back on track now though.

 

[Copepod]

Sounds an interesting study - what is the name of it? Will participants get newsletters etc by post or via internet?

By the way, you should mention to researcher(s) that you're using a different finger pricker, as that's a change from the protocol.

 

[alisonz]

The study is called Hypostudy (rather appropriate) as to nesletters and such I'm really not sure.
DSN has already said it would be no problem to use my own finger pricker so no problem there.
Only thing I can see being a pain is that just now I have no appetite so am not eating much.

 

[Mark T]

It would be interesting and worrying to see what they find.

I think the current opinion is that Type 2's on Metformin can't have a hypo. My understanding (and hopefully this doesn't interfere with the study) is that Metformin inhibits your livers ability to secrete glucose.

If your liver is secreting more glucose then you need then this is a good thing, but if you have dropped you levels low by doing exercise, being late on a meal, etc then you can get lower then you might expect.

Yes, the liver can convert triglycerides or even protein to glucose - but this isn't a fast process. Throw a bit of alcohol into the mix to keep the liver occupied and you can have all sorts of fun with your levels! 😛

 

[trophywench]

Clearly Mark, you understand the process well which is brill but bet if you stuck a selection of 100 random T2's in a room and asked them what the process is - then about 99 of them wouldn't have a clue.

 

[Mark T]

Clearly Mark, you understand the process well which is brill but bet if you stuck a selection of 100 random T2's in a room and asked them what the process is - then about 99 of them wouldn't have a clue.

I don't understand things half as well as you might think 😉 😛

But in this kind of study I'm not sure whether it's better to have people who understand the process or people who don't. If you carry on "oblivious" as normal then it's going to give more natural results, compared with otherwise you might tamper to give the sorts of results you think should be expected (rightly or wrongly).

But... and it's a big but. Considering the stock NHS advice is lots of carbs, it's unlikely that anyone following that advice would have any hypos anyway.