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Diabetes Experimental Drug

February 27, 2012 by · Comments Off on Diabetes Experimental Drug 

Diabetes Experimental Drug, An experimental drug improves patients’ blood sugar control without increasing the risk of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to the results of a phase 2 clinical trial.

Type 2 diabetes is the more prevalent form of the disease, accounting for about 90 percent of cases. Often tied to obesity, type 2 diabetes involves a gradual decline in how insulin responds to changes in blood sugar (glucose).

The new drug, called TAK-875, is a pill designed to enhance the secretion of insulin in response to such changes, which means that it has no effect on insulin secretion when blood sugar levels are normal — potentially reducing the risk for hypoglycemia.

The trial, led by Dr. Charles Burant of the University of Michigan Medical School, included 426 patients with type 2 diabetes who were not getting adequate blood sugar control through diet, exercise or treatment with the first-line diabetes drug metformin.

The patients were randomly assigned to receive either TAK-875 (303 patients), placebo (61 patients), or another diabetes drug called glimepiride (brand named Amaryl).

The study was funded by Takeda Pharmaceutical (which is developing the drug), and appears online Feb. 26 in The Lancet.

After 12 weeks, all the patients taking the different doses of TAK-875 had significant drops in their blood sugar levels, the researchers said. A similar reduction occurred in patients taking glimepiride.

However, the incidence of episodes of hypoglycemia was much lower among patients taking TAK-875 (2 percent) than among those taking glimepiride (19 percent) and the same as those taking the placebo (2 percent).

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