NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – As well as improving HbA1c, continuous glucose monitoring reduces the time spent in hypoglycemia for children and adults with type 1 diabetes on intensive therapy, researchers report.

The findings appear in Diabetes Care online February 19, and due for publication in the April print issue.

The authors note that devices for real-time continuous glucose monitoring have been shown to improve glycemic control, but their benefit in preventing hypoglycemia has not been established.

To look at this issue, Dr. Tadej Battelino, at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and colleagues randomized 120 patients on intensive therapy for type 1 diabetes to use either real-time continuous glucose monitoring or conventional home monitoring with a blood glucose meter over a period of 26 weeks.

In all participants, the baseline HbA1c level of was <7.5%. “HbA1c at 26 weeks was lower in the continuous monitoring group than in the control group (difference -0.27%; p=0.008),” the researchers found. Furthermore, the continuous monitoring group spent a mean of 0.48 hours per day in hypoglycemia compared with 0.97 h/day in the conventional monitoring group, according to the report. Corresponding mean time spent in normoglycemia was 17.6 versus 16.0 h/day (p=0.009), respectively. “Our results must be interpreted with caution since the patients and their families were highly motivated, demonstrating good metabolic control with an average of more than five blood glucose measurements per day before randomization,” Dr. Battelino and colleagues advise. “Additionally, because of its nature, the intervention could not be blinded.” Nonetheless, they conclude that the results “demonstrated significantly shorter time spent in hypoglycemia in children and adults with type 1 diabetes who used continuous glucose monitoring compared with standard self-monitoring of blood glucose, with a concomitant significant decrease of HbA1c.” Diabetes Care 2011.