(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- If you want to prevent diabetes, is it better to take a diabetes medication or adjust your diet and exercising habits? New research suggests changing diet and exercise may have a greater effect than drugs.

People with a condition called metabolic syndrome are at the highest risk for developing heart disease and type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes. Patients with metabolic syndrome have at least three of the following abnormalities: high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels (a bad type of fat in the blood), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (“good” cholesterol), high blood sugar levels, and excess weight.
 
Researchers from the George Washington University in Rockville, Md., have released data comparing whether diet and exercise or a diabetes drug called metformin prevents or reverses the metabolic syndrome in people with high blood sugar levels.

In the study, 3,234 patients with pre-diabetes (slightly high levels of blood sugar) were assigned to receive diet and exercise changes, metformin, or neither.

For patients who did not have metabolic syndrome at the start of the study, diet, exercise and metformin all prevented the development of the disease.

Patients who had the disease at the start of the study were more likely to be free of it at the end if they received diet and exercise intervention or metformin than if they received neither. However, researchers say the benefit of the diet and exercise program was greater than the benefit of metformin.

“These [data] also demonstrate the value of lifestyle intervention, in particular, in both the prevention and treatment of this condition, above and beyond improvements in glycermia (metformin) alone,” say the authors. “Lifestyle intervention may reduce cardiovascular risk in persons with impaired glucose tolerance,” they conclude.

SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, 2005;142:611-619