A sub-analysis of the SAGE study in Italy indicates good glycemic control in type 1 diabetes

Background and aims: Intensive glycemic control minimizes the risk of micro- and macrovascular complications in patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D). We report glycemic control in Italian participants (age groups: 26-44, 45-64, and ≥65 years) of the global SAGE study. Methods and results: The primary endpoint was proportion of participants who achieved an HbA1c <7% in predefined age groups. In the 523 patients with T1D, mean age was 44.6 years and mean body mass index (BMI) was 25 kg/m2. Mean HbA1c was 7.5% and 29.4% had HbA1c <7.0%, with the highest percentage in those 26-45 years (31.7%) and the lowest in those ≥65 years (20%). Altogether, 22.9% of patients achieved their physician-established individualized HbA1c target. Most patients had ≥1 symptomatic hypoglycemic episode in the previous 3 months (≤70 mg/dL 82.5%; ≤54 mg/dL 61%). Severe hypo- and hyperglycemia were experienced by 16.3% and 12% of patients, of which 7.1 and 9.5%, respectively, required hospitalization/emergency visits. More patients achieved HbA1c <7% with CSII (30%) than with multiple daily insulin injections (27.9%). In multivariate analysis, BMI (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.89-0.99, p = 0.032) and adherence to diet (OR 0.36, 95% CI 0.18-0.70, p = 0.0028) were significantly associated with HbA1c <7.0%. Conclusions: Glycemic control can be considered good in the Italian SAGE cohort, especially in younger patients, who more frequently use pumps/continuous glucose monitoring. Greater patient education and use of technology may further support this achievement. Patients should be encouraged to maintain a low BMI and adhere to their diet

Parental evaluation of a telemonitoring service for children with Type 1 Diabetes

Introduction In the past years, we developed a telemonitoring service for young patients affected by Type 1 Diabetes. That service provides data to the clinical staff and offers an important tool to the parents, that are able to oversee in real time their children. The aim of this work was to analyze the parents' perceived usefulness of the service. Methods The service was tested by the parents of 31 children enrolled in a seven-day clinical trial during a summer camp. To study the parents' perception we proposed and analyzed two questionnaires. A baseline questionnaire focused on the daily management and implications of their children's diabetes, while a post-study one measured the perceived benefits of telemonitoring. Questionnaires also included free text comment spaces. Results Analysis of the baseline questionnaires underlined the parents' suffering and fatigue: 51% of total responses showed a negative tendency and the mean value of the perceived quality of life was 64.13 in a 0-100 scale. In the post-study questionnaires about half of the parents believed in a possible improvement adopting telemonitoring. Moreover, the foreseen improvement in quality of life was significant, increasing from 64.13 to 78.39 ( p-value\u2009=\u20090.0001). The analysis of free text comments highlighted an improvement in mood, and parents' commitment was also proved by their willingness to pay for the service (median\u2009=\u2009200\u2009euro/year). Discussion A high number of parents appreciated the telemonitoring service and were confident that it could improve communication with physicians as well as the family's own peace of mind

The OmniPod Insulin Management System: the latest innovation in insulin pump therapy

This review of insulin pump therapy focuses on the OmniPod® Insulin Management System (Insulet Corp., Bedford, MA, USA). The OmniPod System is the first commercially available “patch pump.” It is a fully integrated wearable pump, controlled wirelessly through a handheld device containing a built-in blood glucose meter. This is an evaluation of the OmniPod System, with the aim of providing an educational tool for physicians who are considering recommending this product to their patients. The review includes a discussion of the traditional insulin pump configuration and its limitations, a detailed overview of the OmniPod System, references to clinical study data, planned product enhancements, its use as an insulin delivery system in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Artificial Pancreas Project, and its use to deliver additional compounds

Екатеринбургская неделя. 1883. № 50

This is the author’s accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24364-6_12.acmid: 2050798 location: Saarbrücken, Germany numpages: 16acmid: 2050798 location: Saarbrücken, Germany numpages: 1

Quantifier-Free Interpolation of a Theory of Arrays

The use of interpolants in model checking is becoming an enabling technology to allow fast and robust verification of hardware and software. The application of encodings based on the theory of arrays, however, is limited by the impossibility of deriving quantifier- free interpolants in general. In this paper, we show that it is possible to obtain quantifier-free interpolants for a Skolemized version of the extensional theory of arrays. We prove this in two ways: (1) non-constructively, by using the model theoretic notion of amalgamation, which is known to be equivalent to admit quantifier-free interpolation for universal theories; and (2) constructively, by designing an interpolating procedure, based on solving equations between array updates. (Interestingly, rewriting techniques are used in the key steps of the solver and its proof of correctness.) To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt of computing quantifier- free interpolants for a variant of the theory of arrays with extensionality

Efficient Interpolation for the Theory of Arrays

Existing techniques for Craig interpolation for the quantifier-free fragment of the theory of arrays are inefficient for computing sequence and tree interpolants: the solver needs to run for every partitioning $(A, B)$ of the interpolation problem to avoid creating $AB$-mixed terms. We present a new approach using Proof Tree Preserving Interpolation and an array solver based on Weak Equivalence on Arrays. We give an interpolation algorithm for the lemmas produced by the array solver. The computed interpolants have worst-case exponential size for extensionality lemmas and worst-case quadratic size otherwise. We show that these bounds are strict in the sense that there are lemmas with no smaller interpolants. We implemented the algorithm and show that the produced interpolants are useful to prove memory safety for C programs.Comment: long version of the paper at IJCAR 201