Two diabetes studies released this afternoon are just the latest evidence that lowering key risk factors isn’t enough to improve health. If patients (and their doctors) use the wrong strategies, they may lower risk factors but raise the chances of serious health problems.

That’s the argument from Harlan Krumholz, a Yale cardiologist whose Perspective piece accompanies the studies published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

One of the studies, dubbed Accord, found that an unusually aggressive approach to lowering glycated hemoglobin, a key risk factor in diabetics, actually increased the risk of death.

The other, called Advance, found that an aggressive approach failed to lower the risk of heart attack or death compared with a more typical treatment approach (though researchers did see less kidney damage in the patients treated aggressively).

Krumholz cites other recent studies that showed that a strategy that should theoretically improve outcomes made no difference or made things worse.