A large weight-management program is effective for achieving lifestyle changes associated with diabetes prevention. Such programs could significantly increase the availability of diabetes prevention programs worldwide making an immediate and significant public health impact.

We examined the effects of metformin on diabetes prevention and the subgroups that benefited most over 15 years in the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) and its follow-up, the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS During the DPP (1996-2001), adults at high risk of developing diabetes were randomly assigned to masked placebo (n = 1,082) or metformin 850 mg twice daily (n = 1,073). Participants originally assigned to metformin continued to receive metformin, unmasked, in the DPPOS (2002-present). Ascertainment of diabetes development was based on fasting or 2-h glucose levels after an oral glucose tolerance test or on HbA 1c. Reduction in diabetes incidence with metformin was compared with placebo in subgroups by hazard ratio (HR) and rate differences (RDs). RESULTS During 15 years of postrandomization follow-up, metformin reduced the incidence (by HR) of diabetes compared to placebo by 17% or 36% based on glucose or HbA 1c levels, respectively. Metformin's effect on the development of glucose-defined diabetes was greater for women with a history of prior gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) (HR 0.59, RD 24.57 cases/100 person-years) compared with parous women without GDM (HR 0.94, RD 20.38 cases/100 person-years [interaction P = 0.03 for HR, P = 0.01 for RD]). Metformin also had greater effects, by HR and RD, at higher baseline fasting glucose levels. With diabetes development based on HbA 1c , metformin was more effective in subjects with higher baseline HbA 1c by RD, with metformin RD 21.03 cases/100 person-years with baseline HbA 1c <6.0% (42 mmol/mol) and 23.88 cases/100 person-years with 6.0-6.4% (P = 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Metformin reduces the development of diabetes over 15 years. The subsets that benefitted the most include subjects with higher baseline fasting glucose or HbA 1c and women with a history of GDM.

Across the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) follow-up, cumulative diabetes incidence remained lower in the lifestyle compared with the placebo and metformin randomized groups and could not be explained by weight. Collection of self-reported physical activity (PA) (yearly) with cross-sectional objective PA (in follow-up) allowed for examination of PA and its long-term impact on diabetes prevention. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Yearly self-reported PA and diabetes assessment and oral glucose tolerance test results (fasting glucose semiannually) were collected for 3,232 participants with one accelerometry assessment 11-13 years after randomization (n 5 1,793). Mixed models determined PA differences across treatment groups. The association between PA and diabetes incidence was examined using Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS There was a 6% decrease (Cox proportional hazard ratio 0.94 [95% CI 0.92, 0.96]; P < 0.001) in diabetes incidence per 6 MET-h/week increase in time-dependent PA for the entire cohort over an average of 12 years (controlled for age, sex, baseline PA, and weight). The effect of PA was greater (12% decrease) among participants less active at baseline (<7.5 MET-h/week) (n 5 1,338) (0.88 [0.83, 0.93]; P < 0.0001), with stronger findings for lifestyle participants. Lifestyle had higher cumulative PA compared with metformin or placebo (P < 0.0001) and higher accelerometry total minutes per day measured during follow-up (P 5 0.001 and 0.047). All associations remained significant with the addition of weight in the models. CONCLUSIONS PA was inversely related to incident diabetes in the entire cohort across the study, with cross-sectional accelerometry results supporting these findings. This highlights the importance of PA within lifestyle intervention efforts designed to prevent diabetes and urges health care providers to consider both PA and weight when counseling high-risk patients.

ENCOURAGE was beneficial for reducing BMI percentile in participating children.

The aim of this study was to describe an integrated informatics approach to aggregating and displaying clinically relevant data that can identify problems with medication adherence and facilitate patient-provider communication about strategies to improve medication use. We developed a clinical dashboard within an electronic health record (EHR) system that uses data from three sources: the medical record, pharmacy claims, and a personal health record. The data are integrated to inform clinician-patient discussions about medication adherence. Whereas prior research on assessing patterns of medication adherence focused on a single approach using the EHR, pharmacy data, or patient-entered data, we present an approach that integrates multiple electronic data sources increasingly found in practice. Medication adherence is a complex challenge that requires patient and provider team input, necessitating an integrated approach using advanced EHR, clinical decision support, and patient-controlled technologies. Future research should focus on integrated strategies to provide patients and providers with the right combination of informatics tools to help them adequately address the challenge of adherence to complex medication therapies.