San Diego ? For years, public health officials have urged people to do simple things to manage their diabetes: Watch blood sugar levels, eat a healthy diet and exercise.

Their message, it turns out, appears to be working.

Figures released by the government Saturday show that far fewer Americans with diabetes are ending up in the hospital or developing kidney failure – a sign that diabetes care has improved.

“We are at last improving the quality of life for diabetics,” said Alan Cherrington, president of the American Diabetes Association and a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not connected to the study.

However, a separate study raises concern that doctors may be misdiagnosing kids with Type 1 diabetes, who need insulin to survive. Many of these children were misclassified as Type 2, the diabetes linked to obesity, possibly because their weight problems are throwing doctors off track.

Both studies were presented at an American Diabetes Assn. meeting in San Diego.

The good news came from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 1994 to 2002, the rate of diabetes-related hospitalizations fell from 55 to 36 per 1,000 diabetics. Similarly, the rate of diabetes patients with kidney failure dropped from 327 to 229 per 100,000 population between 1996 and 2002.

Researchers used two sources of information. The kidney failure rates came from a national database of people who had dialysis or transplants in the last decade. The hospitalization rates were based on figures from big hospitals across the country.

The number of people with both types of diabetes has tripled over the past two decades to an estimated 18 million Americans, but more than 90 percent have Type 2. It is the sixth leading cause of death, and complications can include heart, kidney and nerve disease, eye damage and limb amputation.

Doctors have urged people with diabetes to control their blood sugar and blood pressure to avoid or delay kidney failure, which often requires a transplant or dialysis, in which a machine cleans the blood of wastes normally filtered by the kidneys.

“We’ve been working really hard to make diabetes a more common household word and to educate people with diabetes to reduce their risk factors,” said Nilka Rios Burrows, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s diabetes division.

About 130,000 diabetics underwent dialysis or kidney transplant in 2000. The new research suggests that many more have avoided those drastic measures by controlling their blood sugar.

In another study presented at the meeting, researchers found that one out of three children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes were found to be Type 1 after they were given a more sensitive test that is not commonly used in doctors’ offices.

Diabetes treatment differs depending on the type. Type 1 patients cannot make insulin and need to get this hormone, which regulates blood sugar levels, through shots or a pump. Those with the more common Type 2, linked to obesity, often can’t effectively use the insulin their bodies make. They are advised to lose weight, eat a healthy diet and exercise, and sometimes drugs are prescribed.

The study was funded by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.