According to the RELIEF study conducted by a French research team, individuals incorporating basal insulin in their treatment of type-2 diabetes greatly reduce their risk of acute complications. The study found that the Freestyle Libre, a continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system from Abbott, can help sustain this risk mitigation for at least two years.
The RELIEF study observed just under 6,000 people—each selected from a national database from August 2017 to December 2018—with type-2 diabetes that used the Freestyle Libre to track their glucose while treating with basal-only insulin. While the rate of hospitalization for acute complications reached 2.4% in the year prior to the treatment, the following twelve months saw it drop to 0.79%. In terms of risk-reduction changes for acute complications, diabetic ketoacidosis fell from 1.37% to 0.34%, severe hypoglycemia went from 0.73% to 0.41%, and the rate of comas decreased from 0.34% to 0.10%. Although hyperglycemia-related hospitalizations were quite rare in the pre-initiation year, at 0.07%, upon completion of the study there had been none at all. These drops continued for the 1,994 individuals who continued this treatment for two years, with year-one acute event hospitalization rates falling to 0.75% and year-two to 0.60%.
