Culturally appropriate health education has short- to medium-term effects on glycaemic control and on knowledge of diabetes and healthy lifestyles. With this update (six years after the first publication of this review), a greater number of RCTs were reported to be of sufficient quality for inclusion in the review. None of these studies were long-term trials, and so clinically important long-term outcomes could not be studied. No studies included an economic analysis. The heterogeneity of the studies made subgroup comparisons difficult to interpret with confidence. Long-term, standardised, multi-centre RCTs are needed to compare different types and intensities of culturally appropriate health education within defined ethnic minority groups, as the medium-term effects could lead to clinically important health outcomes, if sustained.

Research activity in this field has increased considerably over the past 6 years, with culturally appropriate diabetes education showing consistent benefits over conventional care in terms of glycaemic control and diabetes knowledge, sustained in the short- to mid-term. Further research is needed to determine the clinical significance of these improvements and their cost-effectiveness.

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Background. Abnormal adipocyte function is implicated in both the pathophysiology of coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiac function, where adiponectin provides a putative link. However, the utility of adiponectin as a discriminator of CHD severity is unclear and may be confounded by cardiac function. We hypothesized that plasma adiponectin would relate to indices of coronary artery disease severity (coronary atheroma scores, CAS), ejection fraction (EF) and regional wall motion abnormalities (RWMA) therein.