Bill Harvey: Peel the paint

The sleeping giant that is pre-diabetes continues to slowly reveal itself in ever-scary figures published in the UK news this week.

As the commonest cause of sight loss in the under 60s in the UK, I suggest that all eye care professionals need to keep up to date with what is happening in the diabetes world. There are many risk factors, such as poor diet and lack of exercise, that are known to influence the expression of the disease, either in developing the pre-diabetic state where the development of the full-blown disease is more likely, and in causing the many varied problems of the disease itself once established, including sight loss. Surely identifying the disease at the pre-diabetic stage would allow targeted advice and enable a lower ‘disease conversion.’