Research
Hormonal
Prevention or delay of type 2 diabetes through intensive lifestyle intervention or metformin is associated with a lower prevalence of microvascular complications (retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy) compared to those who progress to diabetes.
Avoiding or delaying the onset of type 2 diabetes significantly reduces your risk of developing serious microvascular complications like eye, kidney, and nerve damage. This benefit is observed even if you don't take medication, as long as you prevent or delay diabetes.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Compared with prevalence of microvascular outcomes among participants who progressed to diabetes, prevalence among those who did not progress was significantly lower.
Why this rating
Long-term follow-up of a large RCT, but observational comparison between those who did/did not progress.
Source
The Diabetes Prevention Program and Its Outcomes Study: NIDDK’s Journey Into the Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes and Its Public Health Impact
Jill P. Crandall et al. · Diabetes Care · 2025
DOI 10.2337/dc25-0014
narrative_review · n=3234Cited 20×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- An intensive lifestyle intervention (ILS) focused on weight loss and increased physical activity reduces the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 58% compared to placebo in high-risk adults with prediabetes, with effects sustained over 21 years.Strong
- Metformin (850 mg twice daily) reduces the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 31% compared to placebo in high-risk adults, with greater efficacy in individuals with a BMI >= 35 kg/m2 and fasting glucose 110–125 mg/dL.Strong
Related findings · Hormonal
- Initial treatment for type 2 diabetes should be a combination of metformin and either an SGLT-2 inhibitor or a GLP-1 receptor agonist to achieve cardiorenal protection, rather than monotherapy or older agents like sulfonylureas.Strong
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- Continued weekly administration of 2.4 mg subcutaneous semaglutide prevents weight regain and promotes further weight loss in adults with overweight or obesity, whereas switching to placebo results in significant weight regain.Strong
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