PREDIABETES: APPROACH AND MANAGEMENT

About 5-10% of individuals with the condition of prediabetes or intermediate hyperglycemia develop diabetes annually. Prediabetes can revert to normal glycaemic state as well. Reversion to normal glucose, even when transient, is associated with a significant 56% reduced risk of future diabetes independent of previous treatment. Prediabetes is associated with many microvascular as well as macro-vascular complications. Micro-vascular complications include retinopathy, neuropathy, and micro-albuminuria while another complication like heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular diseases comes under the macrovascular category. These complications are directly proportional to the succession of hyperglycemia in prediabetes. Detection of the condition prediabetes / intermediate hyperglycemia is a fundamental strategy to keep people from transitioning to diabetes. Lifestyle modification is the mainstay for the management of intermediate hyperglycemia as per various research conducted on the same. The benefit of lifestyle modification with or without pharmacotherapy to prevent or delay the progression of diabetes in patients with prediabetes. When lifestyle modification is ineffective, pharmacologic treatment should be considered although there are no approved pharmacologic treatments for prediabetes. Several types of surgery are also available, and their efficacy has been discussed in the management of the condition. In this review paper, an attempt has been made to explore the approach to the patients of prediabetes and to evaluate the effectiveness of mode of treatment in the light of the findings of different research studies.