The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists’ 24th Annual Scientific and Clinical Congress
The annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists was held from May 13 to 17 in Nashville, Tenn., and attracted approximately 17,000 participants from around the world, including clinicians, academicians, allied health professionals, and others interested in endocrinology. The conference highlighted recent advances in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism.
During one session, W. Timothy Garvey, M.D., of the University of Alabama Diabetes Research Center in Birmingham, discussed the launch of a module and toolkit for obesity management that will help clinical practitioners to initiate obesity care in their practices. The session was designed to present practical information that would assist health care professionals in augmenting the obesity medicine component of their practice.
“The diagnosis of obesity based on body mass index alone is insufficient. There should also be a clinical component to the diagnosis that indicates the degree to which excess adiposity is adversely affecting the health of the individual,” Garvey said.
The session provided practical advice for outfitting an office to accommodate patients with obesity, how to staff the office, and approaches for initiating the discussion about obesity with patients.
During another session, Susan Davis, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, discussed the effectiveness and safety of testosterone therapy in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
“Testosterone can be highly effective for the treatment of low desire-arousal in women but this requires a holistic assessment before treatment with testosterone is considered,” Davis said.
However, according to Davis, testosterone formulations for men should not be used in women and compounded testosterone therapy cannot be recommended.
“There is a serious need for a testosterone formulation for women to be approved by regulators so that doctors are not forced to prescribe male testosterone products or compounded therapy when testosterone is indicated in women,” Davis added.
Saleh Aldasouqi, M.D., of Michigan State University in Ann Arbor, discussed how dental offices may be an effective place for diabetes screening, especially prediabetes. Aldasouqi and colleagues evaluated 500 patients using a questionnaire that focused on body weight, family history of diabetes, ethnicity, and waist circumference. The investigators also assessed hemoglobin A1C. The researchers found that 19.2 percent of patients were diagnosed with prediabetes and 1.2 percent were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
“The main emphasis of our study is prevention,” Aldasouqi said in a statement. “Faced with the fact that there are 29 million Americans with diabetes, of whom 8.1 million people (27.8 percent) are undiagnosed, we saw an opportunity to alleviate the health and financial burdens of undiagnosed diabetes by way of the dental office.”
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