I've been reading so much stuff on diabetes over the last year I may have got muddled up, but I'm a bit disappointed by this particular trial.
The first "Newcastle Experiment" was, I thought, very exciting, as 11/11 people became, and in some cases remained, non-diabetic by any normal medical measure. I had thought (have I got this wrong?) that in that experiment, OGTTs were used, and it was determined that the bodies of the participants had indeed changed quite dramatically in the way they responded to carbohydrates - they fell within the normal range, and, for example, the "first-phase" insulin response had started to work again.
Whereas in this latest experiment, the definition of "remission" has changed to be all about getting an HbA1c result of less than 6.5%.
But we know:
1) Two people can both get the same HbA1c result, yet one can be regularly getting dangerous spikes after carbohydrates while the other one is processing those same carbohydrates in a much more normal way.
2) Two people can both get the same HbA1c result, one through eating very few carbs, the other through eating a lot more carbs but having a body which is much better able to process carbs.
I think the OGTT is the most reliable indicator as to whether a certain process / experiment has changed a person's ability to process carbohydrates.
I'm tempted to pay for the Lancet item to read the whole thing, but has any one else read it, or found an article which mentions whether the participants had OGTTs, and how they changed?