Prevention of Diabetes Through Lifestyle Intervention: Lessons Learned from the Diabetes Prevention Program and Outcomes Study and its Translation to Practice

A number of strategies have been used to delay or prevent the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) in high-risk adults, such as diet, exercise, medications, and surgery. This report focuses on the nutritional lessons learned from implementation of the Intensive Lifestyle Intervention (ILI) in the DPP and its follow-up DPPOS that looked at weight loss through modification of diet and exercise. The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) is a large clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, designed to look at several strategies to prevent conversion to type 2 diabetes (T2D) by adults with prediabetes (IGT/IFG), including ILI. The ~3800 ethnically diverse participants (46 % reported nonwhite race) were overweight, had impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), and impaired fasting glucose (IFG). Treatments were assigned randomly. The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) is a follow-up study that evaluated the long-term outcomes of the clinical trial. Trial registration: DPP is registered in www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT00004992) and DPPOS (NCT 00038727).