[Implementation of the "Diabetes Prevention Program", in Europe]

Prevention of type 2 diabetes has been a major issue for healthcare providers because of the high incidence and the high cost of diabetes. High cost is related to diabetes treatments, diabetes complications and the reduction of lifetime expectancy. The Diabetes Prevention Program study has recently shown that the prevention of diabetes is possible in patients with impaired glucose tolerance. In this study, diabetes was prevented either by metformin or by intensive lifestyle changes. Intensive lifestyle changes were even more effective than metformin in preventing diabetes. This article discusses how difficult it would be to implement this program in Europe. The difficulties would be both practical (identification of the high risk population, patients' motivation for intensive lifestyle changes) and economic. The implementation of the program in Europe would be theoretically cost-effective but would be technically very hard to do.