A study to assess the unmet medical needs associated with the use of basal insulin in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Aim: To describe in a real-world setting, the proportion of patients with a symptomatic hypoglycaemic event and the proportion of individuals with type 2 diabetes, who newly or recently initiated with basal insulin, achieving individual or general HbA1c target. Materials and Method: DINAS-AR was a national prospective observational study to assess the unmet needs in patients with type 2 diabetes treated with basal insulin with or without oral antihyperglycaemic drugs and/or GLP-1 receptor agonist. The study was conducted at 19 hospitals. Results: A total of 385 uncontrolled patients (≥18 years) who recently initiated basal insulin or who initiated treatment within a year prior to study enrolment entered the study. Outcomes were follow-up incidence of hypoglycaemic events, change of HbA1C and achievement of HBA1c <7% or individual target. A total of 44 patients (11.9%) reported the occurrence of ≥1 symptomatic hypoglycaemia event(s). HbA1c reductions were greater in patients who had recently initiated treatment with basal insulin (between 15 and 90 days prior to study entry) vs patients who initiated treatment within 1 year. A total of 80 patients (31.6%) achieved individual HbA1c target (or target <7.0%) at Week 24. Furthermore, the proportion of patients achieving this target without symptomatic hypoglycaemia was 26.1% (n = 66). A lower percentage of glycemia target achievement was observed in patients reporting hypoglycaemia (n = 14), 20.6% of all patients reporting hypoglycaemia event(s) vs (n = 66) 35.7% of all patients without hypoglycaemia event reported. Conclusion: In this real-world study, although the hypoglycaemia rate was not high in adults with type 2 diabetes treated with insulin, there was a lower percentage of patients that achieved glycemic target among those reporting hypoglycaemia events vs patients who did not report them.

Variability among four laboratories of the filter bag technique to determine acid and neutral detergent fiber contents in ruminant feeds from Argentina.

The objective of this work was to evaluate the filter bag technique (FBT) in an ANKOM 200 fiber analyzer to assess its accuracy for the determination of acid and neutral detergent fiber (ADF and NDF, respectively) contents in common ruminant feeds from the temperate region of Argentina. The evaluation was done in a ring test of 4 laboratories. The 3 Argentine laboratories were from the College of Agronomy, University of Buenos Aires, the College of Agricultural Sciences of the Catholic University of Argentina, and the Balcarce Agricultural Experiment Station of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA). The fourth laboratory was from the Department of Animal Science of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. The feeds utilized were soybean meal expeller, whole sunflower seed, corn grain, herbages of alfalfa, ryegrass, tall wheatgrass, weeping lovegrass, guinea and barley grasses, and silages of corn and of a natural grassland. Results indicated that values obtained in the 4 laboratories were consistent regardless of the laboratory where the analyses were performed. It was concluded that the FBT in the ANKOM instrument gave satisfactory results when used for the determination of both ADF and NDF across samples having a wide range of fiber contents, and that the among-laboratories variability of this methodology was low.

Evaluation of two procedures to determine acid and neutral detergent fibers in ruminant feeds of the temperate region of Argentina.

The objective of this work was to compare the traditional Van Soest's procedure to analyze neutral detergent fibers (NDF) and acid detergent fibers (ADF) using filtering crucibles (VS) with a semiautomatic method which uses filter bags in an ANKOM Technology Corp. instrument (ANK). Nine ruminant feeds widely used in the temperate region of Argentina were analyzed: soybean meal expeller, alfalfa, pasture silage, ryegrass, corn silage, weeping lovegrass, tall wheatgrass, guinea grass, and barley grass. Four runs were done for each technique and feed. The comparison of ADF and NDF means by the means test for paired samples showed no significant differences between techniques (alpha = 0.01). The variability among runs was greater with the VS method than the ANK, both for NDF, standard deviation (SD) = 0.71 vs 0.39, and for ADF, SD = 0.83 vs 0.56, but the differences were not significant. The linear regressions were VS = 1.43 + 0.95 ANK; R2 = 0.99, and VS = 0.53 + 0.98 ANK; R2 = 0.99 for NDF and ADF, respectively, which indicated a strong linear relationship among the results of both procedures. It was concluded that the ANK procedure gave results comparable to those of the VS method when ruminant feeds from the temperate region of Argentina were analyzed.