<International Diabetes>: Firstly Professor Holman, postprandial hyperglycemia is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and has been suggested as a new cardiovascular risk reduction intervention target. Do you agree that postprandial hyperglycemia’s impact on cardiovascular disease is mainly mediated by oxidative stress? By what mechanism does postprandial hyperglycemia increase oxidative stress and further lead to an increase in cardiovascular disease?
<International Diabetes>: Professor Pan, are there other tests in China to monitor fluctuations in glucose besides continuous glucose monitoring systems (CGMS)? Could you tell us a bit about the present situation in China for monitoring postprandial glucose?
Prof. Pan: CGMS is very useful for monitoring variations in glucose. There is another problem in China because CGMS is not included in state insurance reimbursements, which means if we use it we should ask patients to pay by themselves. Therefore it is quite uncommon for us to use this method. If a patient’s glucose is poorly controlled it would suggest there would be significant variation. If patients have hypoglycemia than we can choose CGMS for monitoring glucose and glucose level variation. We do use CGMS for GDM since this condition requires the strict control of blood glucose. Especially if there is some indication in a particular patient to choose CGMS then we certainly will use it whenever possible.