The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial/Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications Study at 30 Years: The “Gift” That Keeps on Giving!

There are events that occur during our lives that because of the significance or enormity of the event we vividly remember the time, place, and what we were doing at the time! Clearly, events related to our family life would be good examples as we all remember the time, place, and emotion surrounding the birth of a child, a marriage, or perhaps the untimely death of a parent or other loved one. We also seem to recall with uncanny details where we were and what we were doing when we first heard news of a remarkable achievement, a human tragedy, or natural disaster. For example, most people today will easily recall their circumstances on the morning of 11 September 2001. Those in our generation vividly remember when we first heard of the assassination of John F. Kennedy or watched the first lunar landing on our black-and-white televisions. With this in mind, we can vividly recall when the initial results of the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) were presented in Las Vegas in 1993 at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions. During the session, the significance of the findings was quite apparent. We realized there was no more guessing on what our standards of treatment were to be…now we had data! But, to be honest, we clearly did not appreciate the fact that 20 years later, we would be reflecting on that moment as just the beginning of a long and rewarding story. We agreed that the initial results at the time ushered in a new paradigm of treatment, but not one of us in attendance that day could have predicted what was to come of the DCCT and that the study would be as relevant today as it was then and continue to inform and provide new information …