Diabetes Drug Linked to Lower Risk of Heart Disease

Using liraglutide, an injectable drug widely used to lower blood sugar levels, may help reduce risk of myocardial infarction, stroke or cardiovascular death, suggests a study.

Liraglutide is a diabetes medication in clinical use since 2009. It is a glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist that lowers blood sugar and reduces body weight.

The findings, showed that people who used liraglutide had five fewer major cardiovascular events for three years.

According to a senior researcher,

Our study provides support for the cardiovascular effectiveness of liraglutide among a broader unselected group of patients, providing important confirmatory evidence from routine clinical practice. We believe it may be of interest to drug regulators, clinical guidelines, physicians and patients.

Use of liraglutide was also associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular death and any cause of death.

The Study

For the study, the team used several nationwide registers with information on prescription drugs, diseases and other data from more than 46,000 patients in Sweden and Denmark between 2010 and 2016.

Around 23,000 patients initiating treatment with liraglutide were compared with the same number of patients initiating treatment with another diabetes drug, DPP4 inhibitors.

The main outcome in the study was on major cardiovascular events, defined as myocardial infarction, stroke or cardiovascular death.
The rate of major cardiovascular events was 14 per 1,000 person-years among patients using liraglutide and 15.4 per 1,000 among patients using DPP4 inhibitors, a statistically significant difference, the researchers said.

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Type 2 diabetes drug can exhaust insulin-producing cells, claims new study

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Long-term use of liraglutide - a drug used to lower blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes patients - may have a deteriorating effect on insulin-producing beta cells, leading to an increase in blood sugar levels, a new study has claimed.

There is now compelling evidence that liraglutide therapy is efficacious at least in the short term, since it produces an initial reduction in blood sugar. However, many patients do not respond to the treatment and some even display adverse reactions such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Researchers from Karolinska Institute in Sweden and University of Miami in US conducted a study on mice implanted with human insulin-producing cells. Blood-sugar suppressors in the form of analogues of the incretin hormone GLP-1 are commonly used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, since they stimulate the glucose response of the pancreatic beta cells to make them secrete more insulin.

To study the long-term effects of incretin therapy, researchers worked with humanised mice, generated by transplanting human insulin-producing cells into the anterior chamber of the eye. The mice were given daily doses of liraglutide for more than 250 days, during which time the researchers were able to monitor how the pancreatic beta cells were affected.

The results showed an initial improvement in the insulin-producing cells, followed by a gradual exhaustion, with reduced secretion of insulin as a response to glucose. This, they say, was unexpected.

"Given the lack of clinical studies on the long-term effect of these drugs in diabetes patients, this is a very important discovery," said Midhat Abdulreda from University of Miami. "We also need to take these results into account before prescribing blood-sugar suppressing GLP-1 analogues when planning long-term treatment regimens for patients," said Per-Olof Berggren from Karolinska Institute.

"Our study also shows in general how to carry out in vivo studies of the long-term effects of drugs on human insulin-producing cells, which should be extremely important to the drug industry," said Berggren.

The findings were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

COMMON DRUGS MAY HELP TO FIGHT DEMENTIA BETTER !

Everyday medicines like antibiotics, acne pills and other 

routine treatments that are already in bathroom cabinets 

could be used in the battle against dementia as developing 

new drugs is too costly and slow, experts have suggested. 


According to experts, it is time to re-examine medicines 

already in circulation as cheaper, quicker alternatives to new 

treatments. 


Many have multiple effects on the body, so some could be 

able to ease the effects of Alzheimer's and other forms of 

dementia. 


There are only four Alzheimer's drugs in use which can help 

relieve symptoms but do nothing to stop damage to the brain. 

Defeating dementia is one of the biggest challenges facing 

both medicine and society as a whole.


Developing new drugs is incredibly important but it comes 

with a huge price tag and, for those affected by dementia, an 

unimaginable wait. 


It can take up to 20 years and 600 million pounds to create a 

drug from scratch. Hopes of quickly adding to available 

treatments were recently dashed when several promising 

new ones failed the final stage of testing. 


So  experts turned to the possibility of using everyday drugs. 

They drew up a short-list, which includes liraglutide - a 

diabetes treatment that also acts on the brain. 

Others include minocycline, an antibiotic for acne, and 

acitretin, which treats the skin condition psoriasis. There is 

also a family of blood pressure drugs called calcium channel 

blockers. 


Some of these medicines cost less than 50p a tablet. 

The idea that drugs for other conditions could fight 

Alzheimer's is appealing, according yo researchers.


But it's not yet clear that such a drug exists. Alzheimer's is a 

complex disease with many risk factors.