Diabetes was first described by the Greeks about A.D. 165. Insulin – the drug widely used to manage the disease – was discovered in 1921.
Decades later, diabetes remains a dangerous, incurable disease.
It will kill more than 2,000 Coloradans this year and lead to 49,000 hospitalizations for medical complications, such as kidney failure and heart attacks, according to the state health department.
Still, efforts continue to combat the two forms of the disease – type 1, an autoimmune disorder, and type 2, which is linked to obesity, genetics and possibly the environment.
“Both types of diabetes are terrible, and both are rising,” said Jane Runge, a Golden resident and mother of a child with diabetes.
Runge helped organize the American Diabetes Association’s Step Out to Fight Diabetes in Denver on Saturday – one of about 200 run/walks in cities across the country this month.
The 5K events raise awareness of diabetes and they raise money to fight both forms of the disease, in which the body cannot appropriately regulate blood sugar, Runge said.
Treating diabetes in Colorado, which has one of the lowest rates of the disease in the country, costs about $22 billion a year, said Dale Rogoff Greer, the state’s diabetes program manager.
Those costs are borne by government, individuals and insurers, Greer said.
A new state strategy is being drafted, Greer said, to try to deal with the crippling and expensive nature of the disease. The strategy should be completed by the end of the year.
Better access to technology – expensive technology – would also help, Greer said.
New insulin pumps and blood monitors help patients regulate the blood-sugar ups and downs of diabetes – which wear away at organs, causing complications.
Those technologies, however, aren’t reaching as many patients as health care providers would like, Greer said.
Insulin pumps start at $5,000, test strips for checking blood- sugar levels several times a day are $90 for a month’s supply, and emergency kits may be $100 or more, she said.
“You won’t find people who are uninsured buying a pump,” Greer said.
Others without insurance end up in hospitals with diabetic emergencies, she said, that cost an average of nearly $25,000 in Colorado.
The lack of insurance and in- adequate insurance have been a growing problem at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora, said Rita Temple-Trujillo, a center social worker.
About 22 percent of the center’s patients do not have insurance that will cover their diabetes care, she said – up from about 12 percent in 2000.
Marian Rewers, clinical director of the center, estimated $100,000 a year in donations are made for testing supplies, insulin and emergency kits to children lacking coverage.
Even for patients with health insurance, state-of-the-art diabetes care is expensive.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette’s 13-year-old daughter was hospitalized twice after she went into convulsions at night, the Colorado congresswoman said.
Francesca DeGette hasn’t had another episode since getting an insulin pump to keep her blood-sugar levels on keel.
“Now I can really eat anything, anytime,” she said.
“Before, say I had Lucky Charms for breakfast, my blood sugar would go straight up and then right back down,” Francesca said.
“The real disparity we’re starting to see is between people who are affluent enough to pay for the advanced technology, and people who just have to continue to use the old techniques,” Diana DeGette said.
“Over the long term, these kids who don’t have the best technology … are at greater potential for complications,” she said.
Katy Human: 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error it inaccurately described the operation of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes. The center is part of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora.
