• Posted December 22, 2025

Reversing Prediabetes Key To Protecting Heart Health, Experts Say

People on the verge of type 2 diabetes can cut their risk of death from heart disease by more than 50% if they bring their blood sugar levels back to normal, a new study says.

Patients with prediabetes reduced their heart risk by up to 58% when they successfully lowered their blood sugar, researchers reported in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

This is an important finding, given that recent studies have concluded people with prediabetes can’t lower heart disease risk through lifestyle changes like exercise, weight loss and a healthy diet, researchers said.

Essentially, reversing prediabetes by lowering blood sugar matters more to your heart than any healthy habits you adopt, researchers said.

“This study challenges one of the biggest assumptions in modern preventative medicine,” said lead researcher Dr. Andreas Birkenfeld, a reader in diabetes at King’s College London.

“For years, people with prediabetes have been told that losing weight, exercising more and eating healthier will protect them from heart attacks and early death,” Birkenfeld said in a news release. “While these lifestyle changes are unquestionably valuable, the evidence does not support that they reduce heart attacks or mortality in people with prediabetes.”

Instead, Birkenfeld said, "We show that remission of prediabetes is associated with a clear reduction in fatal cardiac events, heart failure and all-cause mortality.”

In prediabetes, a person’s blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to warrant a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. People at this stage can ward off diabetes if they get their blood sugar back to normal.

In the U.S., more than 1 in 3 adults has prediabetes, researchers said in background notes.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from two landmark diabetes prevention trials, including more than 2,400 participants from a U.S. trial and 540 from a Chinese trial.

Results showed that people who reversed their prediabetes had a 58% lower risk of heart-related death or hospitalization from heart failure.

This effect persisted decades after they brought their blood sugar levels back to normal, researchers said.

Likewise, the risk of heart attack, stroke and other heart-related emergencies fell by 42% in people who reversed their prediabetes.

“The study findings mean that prediabetes remission could establish itself — alongside lowering blood pressure, cutting cholesterol and stopping smoking – as a fourth major primary prevention tool that truly prevents heart attacks and deaths,” Birkenfeld said.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more on prediabetes.

SOURCES: King’s College London, news release, Dec. 12, 2025; The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Dec. 12, 2025