Machine Learning Approach to Drug Treatment Strategy for Diabetes Care

Globally, the number of people with diabetes mellitus has quadrupled in the past three decades, and approximately one in 11 adults worldwide have diabetes mellitus. Since both microvascular and macrovascular diseases in patients with diabetes predispose them to a lower quality of life as well as higher rates of mortality, managing blood glucose levels is of clinical relevance in diabetes care. Many classes of antihyperglycemic drugs are currently approved to treat hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, with several new drugs having been developed during the last decade. Diabetes-related complications have been reduced substantially worldwide. Prioritization of therapeutic agents varies according to national guidelines. However, since the characteristics of participants in clinical trials differ from patients in actual clinical practice, it is difficult to apply the results of such trials to clinical practice. Machine learning approaches became highly topical issues in medicine along with rapid technological innovations in the fields of information and communication in the 1990s. However, adopting these technologies to support decision-making regarding drug treatment strategies for diabetes care has been slow. This review summarizes data from recent studies on the choice of drugs for type 2 diabetes mellitus focusing on machine learning approaches.

Lactic Acidosis with Metformin Use in a Patient with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus / General Medicine

Metformin is widely prescribed for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). Its use for patients with type 1 has been considered a contraindication because of possible adverse effects such as lactic acidosis. However, metformin has been recently used with insulin therapy to reduce insulin-dose requirements in Type 1 DM.<br>An 81-year-old Japanese woman with type 1 DM was treated with insulin and metformin. She was admitted to our hospital due to altered mental state and hypotensive shock via a referral from her primary care physician. The patient had severe lactic acidosis and acute kidney injury with hyperkalemia with the suspected cause being the use of metformin. She was treated successfully with hemodialysis (HD).<br>Although the independent predictive factor of mortality due to metformin-associated lactic acidosis is a prothrombin time (PT) activity of less than 50% in 24 hours, we recommend that HD should be performed for a patient with severe lactic acidosis even if the initial PT activity is normal.