Sweet Success

The good news for America's 17 million diabetes sufferers is that the disease is no longer an early death sentence. Careful monitoring of blood glucose — and careful attention to the early warning signs of complications — can ensure a long, healthy life for people with diabetes. The bad news for diabetes-management advocates is that nearly 6 million Americans with diabetes do not even know they have the disease, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Fortunately, clinicians and the federal government are beginning to understand the benefits of early diagnosis and disease management, and this growing awareness means huge opportunities for the manufacturers and providers of diabetes-management products.

“Ten or 15 years ago, doctors were much more likely to tell someone, ‘You have only a touch of diabetes,’” says Mark Samuels, chief executive officer of SpectRx, a company whose new glucose monitor tests interstitial fluid instead of blood. “Today, they realize that if you have diabetes, you'll be subject to kidney failure, blindness, non-traumatic amputation and other complications. [Consequently], people are living longer and being much more aggressive about managing blood glucose.”

But awareness is not the only engine driving what the experts say is a 10 to 20 percent annual growth rate in the diabetes-management market. Demographics also are playing a role. “The substantial growth of Type 2 diabetes has more to do with diet and exercise issues,” says Kevin Seifert, vice president and general manager of Beckton Dickinson's consumer health care division. “This is true not only for Americans [but also] for other countries that are becoming more Westernized.”

Adding fuel to the fire are changes in the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population and a rapidly growing aging population, according to Jennifer Hahamian, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Metrika, a company that recently introduced a handheld A1C testing device. “The number of diagnoses will continue to increase as we get older and fatter — and as we increase in ethnic diversity,” she explains.