Glucose Control and Renal and Retinal Complications of Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

To the Editor.— Reading the article from the Colorado Group 1 entitled Glucose Control and Renal and Retinal Complications of Insulin-dependent Diabetes was very much like moving back in time to the 1950s and 1960s. In those years a number of similar articles were published that gave rise to the widely accepted but unsupported notion that instituting more rigid control of blood levels would benefit the eyes and kidneys of diabetics. The recent article is, for all intents and purposes, a verbatim reproduction of those articles, except the term glycohemoglobin has been substituted for urinary glucose to reflect the more sophisticated methodology employed. Sophistication, however, cannot over-come the enormous non sequitur inherent in the authors' inference that rigid control of the blood levels in their diabetic patients favorably altered their renal and retinal complications. The fallacy of the authors' conclusion should be obvious to any investigator. Only prospective