Research

Hormonal

Low-Carbohydrate diets are more effective in reducing HbA1c in the short term (<12 months), in smaller studies, and in patients aged 60 years or older.

If you are over 60 years old with Type 2 Diabetes, a Low-Carbohydrate diet may offer superior HbA1c reduction compared to other diets, especially if you can maintain it for less than a year. This subgroup benefit was not as pronounced in younger or longer-term studies.

ModerateQualifiesLOW confidence
We could show that LC diets were more effective in reducing HbA1c in the shorter-term (< 12 months), in smaller size studies, and including patients >= 60 years.
Lukas Schwingshackl et al. · European Journal of Epidemiology · 2018

Why this rating

Subgroup analyses have lower power and are prone to false positives; credibility of evidence for LC comparisons was 'very low'.

Source

A network meta-analysis on the comparative efficacy of different dietary approaches on glycaemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Lukas Schwingshackl et al. · European Journal of Epidemiology · 2018

DOI 10.1007/s10654-017-0352-x

Meta-analysis · 56 studiesCited 267×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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