April 17, 2014
In a 1,100-word story on its front page, the New York Times (4/17, A1, Tavernise, Grady, Subscription Publication) reports that research published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows “the first broad national picture of progress against some of the most devastating complications of diabetes, which affects millions of Americans, finding that rates of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and amputations fell sharply over the past two decades.” Researchers found that the largest “declines were in the rates of heart attacks and deaths from high blood sugar, which dropped by more than 60 percent from 1990 to 2010, the period studied.” The study’s lead author, Edward W. Gregg, a senior epidemiologist at the CDC, “said researchers used four federal data sets – the National Health Interview Survey, the National Hospital Discharge Survey, the United States Renal Data System, and Vital Statistics – over a 20-year period to give a comprehensive picture of diabetes outcomes.”
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