Postprandial hyperglycemia: implications for practice

Despite the growing consensus that postprandial glucose levels provide a more accurate and valuable early marker of diabetes symptoms than fasting plasma glucose, the ability to forestall diabetic complications by managing postprandial hyperglycemia has not been proved. Patients who are not considered to have diabetes mellitus may have impaired glucose tolerance (and increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease), and targeting nonfasting glucose can reduce insulin requirements for patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (type 1 diabetes mellitus). The challenge now is to determine what fasting glucose levels merit intervention, when and how they should be determined, and who should measure them. After outlining the discrepancies and lack of consensus between measurement guidelines developed by different professional organizations, the author then reviews options for treating postprandial hyperglycemia, including prepackaged meals, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, acarbose therapy, and fast-acting insulin preparations.