The head of the Endocrinology Service of the General Hospital of Mexico, Sara Arellano Montaño, indicated that of the approximately seven million Mexicans diagnosed with diabetes, 60 percent already have kidney problems.
He said that the average annual expenditure of the Public Health sector for the care of patients with this disease is seven billion pesos and 75 percent of these resources are for the care of complications derived from type 2 diabetes mellitus.
By participating in the Diabetes Seminar for the media, carried out in this port, he said that in Mexico 70 thousand people die as a result of this disease or its complications, such as heart conditions.
Type 2 diabetes, he explained, is the main cause of blindness, amputations and other serious complications.
He said that in the country there is no true culture of prevention and that generates that, in good part of the cases, medical care is late and in the short or medium term complications arise.
"The problem is that there is no medical culture to check us twice a year glucose; diabetes is a progressive disease and when it is usually diagnosed, five to 10 years have elapsed with the disease.
"Although progress has been made, we have not reached the figures we want, that 80 percent of the population checks their glucose levels," he said.
Arellano Montaño stressed that until a few years ago, in studies on this disease the effects on the kidneys had been ignored, but now it is known that it is part of the eight factors or failures in the functioning of organs that generate this evil.
He explained that the human body needs 250 grams of glucose to function and a normal diet provides 180 grams, the rest is generated by the liver.
One of the kidney functions is to filter the sugar daily and send again to the bloodstream starts from what the body requires, but unfortunately it does not detect if there is an over glucose production and reabsorbs all that passes through it.
He added that with this knowledge new therapies have been developed that, although, do not revert the renal damage produced by diabetes, if it avoids excess glucose reabsorption and more efficiently controls the diabetic patient.
In that line, the alliance of two pharmaceutical companies launched a new molecule called Pagliflozina, which must be administered under medical recommendation in combination with other therapies.
According to pharmacists, this substance is not recommended for patients over 65, due to renal deterioration, or for those who have 45 percent or less renal function, because it would not help them.
