The world's leading experts on the treatment and prevention of type 2 diabetes will gather for the Wayne State University School of Medicine's Fourth Annual International Motor City Diabetes Symposium on Friday, Oct. 19, in the Kresge Eye Institute auditorium.

About 170,000 people die of complications from type 2 diabetes annually. In addition to being the leading cause of blindness and end-stage kidney failure (necessitating kidney transplants or kidney dialysis), nearly 80,000 amputations each year result from nerve and vascular complications associated with diabetes. However, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced a study that showed that at least 10 million Americans at high risk for type 2 diabetes can drastically lower their chances of getting the disease with proper diet and exercise.

This symposium, which targets physicians, health-care providers, policymakers and health-insurance executives, seeks to educate participants about prevention and treatment techniques that can save lives and potentially billions of dollars in health-care costs. Diabetes and its complications is the fourth-costliest health-care issue in the United States, costing an estimated $130 billion per year.

"We need to discuss who is going to pay for fitness club memberships? Who is going to pay for healthy food? Who is going to pay for nutritional counseling?" said George Grunberger, MD, medical director of the Hood Diabetes Center. "This could save us billions of dollars, and that's not even taking into account the incalculable cost of human suffering."

Presentations at the symposium will feature:

Community-based management of type 2 diabetes among ethnic minorities;

Psychological interventions for patients with type 1 diabetes;

Finland's diabetes prevention studies on lifestyle modification, by Jaakko Tuomilehto, MD, PhD, a pioneer in determining the role of lifestyle in diabetes; and

The implications of new diabetes treatment and prevention.

With more than 1,000 medical students, WSU is among the nation's largest medical schools. Together with the Detroit Medical Center, the school is a leader in patient care and medical research in a number of areas including cancer, genetics, women's and children's health, and the neurosciences.