By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

AVONDALE - The number of diabetes cases will more than double in Greater Cincinnati by 2020, the director of the University of Cincinnati's new Diabetes Center said Tuesday.

As the population gets older and fatter over the next 16 years, 300,000 people in the metropolitan area are expected to have adult-onset diabetes, said Dr. Barbara Ramlo-Halsted. About 140,000 people in the region now have the disease.

Diabetes "is an epidemic already, but it's going to get worse," Ramlo-Halsted, a UC diabetologist, said at the center's opening ceremony.

Diabetes is the sixth-leading cause of death nationally, as well as in Ohio and Kentucky. It also contributes to heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and lower-extremity amputations.

It's also expensive. Nationally, diabetes costs $132 billion a year, including $92 billion in direct medical expenses. In 2002, a person with diabetes spent more than $13,000 a year on health care, compared to about $2,500 for a person without diabetes.

Mary Jane Stewart, 41, learned her daughter Theresa, now 15, was diabetic in 1997. A few months later, the Aurora, Ind., woman learned that she, too, had the disease.

Stewart became a patient at the center when she realized she needed extra help to keep her diabetes under control.

"As you go through your day, you're working and you have a child who has a chronic illness; and you're so busy managing that that you forget to take care of yourself," she said.

Stewart and her daughter both use insulin pumps to keep their blood-sugar levels stable. But they still need to be vigilant about eating right and checking their blood sugar.

Stewart told staff at the center that she has two years to get her blood sugar under control - that's when she completes the nursing program she's enrolled in at Ivy Tech State College in Lawrenceburg.

"I don't want to be a nurse and telling people they need to do this and this and that and not be doing it myself," she said.

The new center will provide comprehensive diabetes treatment and management, as well as research, physician education and community outreach.

The center includes patient education resources. Patients will also be able to "graph out" their blood sugar levels, weight and other indicators on computers at the center to show how much progress they've made, or see how much work they still have to do.

Two certified diabetes educators - a registered nurse and a registered dietitian - will work with patients to show them how to keep their disease under control.

Dr. Jane E. Henney, senior vice president and provost for health affairs at UC, said the center will "raise the bar" for diabetes treatment in the region.

The center's mission was laid out by the Diabetes Task Force, a group of doctors, patients and others from across the region.

Mark Upson III, who led the task force, said members recognized diabetes is "a huge problem." Part of the center's mission is putting together treatment programs that will be endorsed and adopted by local physicians. Another part is meeting the treatment needs of populations who are most at risk for diabetes but least likely to have access to care - the poor, the elderly and minorities.

Ramlo-Halsted said staff are looking at the best way to educate at-risk groups on how to recognize symptoms - fatigue, thirst and frequent urination are the hallmarks of the disease - and to warn them of the damage diabetes can do.

E-mail pofarrell@enquirer.com