Taking the diabetic medicine in excess is considered harmful as these effect a patient’s other body organs like kidney, heart, etc. hence, it is advisable to take these meds once a week. According to the new review of existing evidence, there's little difference in the performance of five new once-a-week drugs to cure diabetes.
Earlier studies of the drugs known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists - or GLP-1RAs - have discovered that the medications improve blood sugar control and bring body weight down, but the review said no research had compared the various versions head-to-head.
"The main message is that today several drugs are available for the control of hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes, as never before," said Dr. Francesco Zaccardi, of the Diabetes Research Center at Leicester General Hospital in the U.K., "Therefore, it is even more important to know differences and similarities among drugs."
The body can't properly use or make enough of the hormone insulin to convert blood sugar into energy in type-2 diabetes. The drugs compared in the study stimulate insulin and have other significant effects such as reduced or improper digestion. All are taken once a week.
The American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes recommend GLP-1RAs as an alternate for people with type 2 diabetes who have tried other treatments including lifestyle changes and metformin that is a ancient oral drug used to improve blood sugar control.
Zaccardi and colleagues analyzed data from 34 trials for the new study that included a total of 21,126 contributors taking one of the five GLP-1RAs. They revealed that the drugs performed similarly in reducing blood sugar, as well as heart disease risk factors like cholesterol, high blood pressure and inflammation. The risk of dangerous blood sugar troughs known as hypoglycemia was also similar among people taking all the drugs.
However, the medications differed when it came to reducing weight and HbA1c- a measure of average blood sugar levels over three months. Dulaglutide 1.5 milligrams (mg) that is sold as Trulicity by Eli Lilly; once-weekly exenatide, sold as Bydureon by AstraZeneca; and taspoglutide 20 mg, which is in development by Ipsen and Roche, all these meds performed better on those albiglutide that is sold as Tanzeum by GlaxoSmithKline. Semaglutide, are in development by Novo Nordisk was not a part of this analysis.
The differences were yet small. HbA1c is calculated in percentages with normal being below 6 percent and 6.5 percent or above being considered diabetes. Zaccardi told Reuters Health that the greatest differences between the drugs were around 0.4 percent for HbA1c and about three pounds of body weight.
"The weight loss is instructive because a lot of people hear stories of people losing a lot of weight, but the mean weight loss is modest," said Dr. Sethu Reddy, chief of the Adult Diabetes Section at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
The researchers also found that taspoglutide 20 mg has the greatest threat of nausea. And once-weekly exenatide raised heart rate as compared to albiglutide and dulaglutide by 1.4 to 3.2 beats per minute.
Zaccardi said that few comparisons like this study have been done between similar diabetes drugs that limits their ability to compare the results to other types of treatments. "I believe that the study underlines the necessity to perform direct comparisons among drugs of the same class to better clarify the pros and cons of each drug," he added.
Reddy, who wasn’t a part of the new review also warned that the findings are based on a comparison of existing data from separate studies. "It's not the 'real deal' so to speak in that there are no trials comparing these drugs to one another," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment