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Introduction:
What is diabetes?

A person has diabetes when their body’s blood glucose (or blood sugar) levels are higher than normal.

We take in glucose from the foods we eat, and it has the extremely important task of providing energy to all of our body’s cells.

Usually the pancreas, an organ located in between our stomach and spine, produces a hormone called insulin that is responsible for helping blood carry glucose to our cells. But if the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, or if the insulin isn’t doing its job, then our body is unable to process the glucose.

Basically, the glucose remains stuck in our blood and cells won’t be receiving this, the energy, which they need to function.

There are three different kinds of diabetes:

Type 1,
Type 2, and
Gestational Diabetes.

The differences between all these will be explained, but much of our discussion will focus mainly on Type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form (and the most easily prevented).

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New drug set to benefit 100,000 people with common heart condition.

Wed 27 APRIL 2016 – NHS England – NICE gives green light to new drug set to benefit 100,000 people with common heart condition

Sacubitril valsartan for chronic heart failure has been recommended as a new heart failure drug sacubitril valsartan (Entresto, Novartis), the first drug of its type, as an option for some people with heart failure.

Guidance recommends the £3 per day treatment for this life-threatening condition which affects over 100,000 people with moderate to severe symptoms in whose heart is only able to pump a reduced amount of oxygenated blood around the body (called – reduced ejection fractionii), and whose heart failure is not controlled by the commonly used drugs, ACE inhibitors or ARBs.

Treatment with sacubitril valsartan is estimated to cost about £1,200 per person per year.