Tag Archives: drugs for diabetes

Drugs for Diabetes: Insulin Degludec (Tresiba) – A New Long-Acting Insulin

Posted on August 1, 2016 | Comments Off on Drugs for Diabetes: Insulin Degludec (Tresiba) – A New Long-Acting Insulin

Tresiba joins other long-acting insulins like insulin glargine (Lantus), insulin detemir (Levemir), and good ol’ NPH insulin. While FDA-approved in the U.S. only this year, it’s been used in other countries for some time. Insulin degludec will have different names depending on the country.

Who Is It For?

  • Adults with type 1 and 2 diabetes
  • Not for diabetic ketoacidosis
  • We have no good data on use in children (under 18), pregnant women, and nursing mothers

How Long Does It Work?

It will last for at least 30 hours in most users. After that, effectiveness starts to taper off but some effect may be seen as long as 42 hours after the injection.

What Is Its Role In Treating Diabetes?

Insulin degludec is a basal insulin, meaning that it runs in the background continuously. It’s not designed to reduce blood sugar that rises after a meal. If your pancreas still makes insulin, release of that insulin may reduce after-meal glucose levels adequately. Otherwise, after-meal glucose elevations are addressed with bolus insulin injections. Bolus-type insulins are the rapid-acting ones like Humalog and Novolog.

Most NPH insulin users, and some insulin glargine (Lantus) users, need the injection twice daily. Because of its long duration of action, Triseba users should never need more than one injection daily. I don’t have much experience with Levemir because the hospital where I work doesn’t stock it.

Triseba users should take it at about the same time daily. If you miss that time by up to five or six hours either way, it probably won’t matter.

What’s the Dose?

For type 2 diabetics who have never used insulin, the starting dose is typically 10 units/day.

For type 1’s switching from other insulins, the usual starting dose is one-third to one-half of the total daily insulin dose, plus rapid-acting bolus insulin around meal times for the remainder.

Change the dose no more often than every three or four days.

How Much Does It Cost?

I don’t know. Likely more than some of the other basal insulins.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Click here for full prescribing information.

PPS: If glargine, degludec, and detemir sound like Greek to you, you’ll appreciate my book.

No degludec up in here!

No degludec up in here!

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Which Diabetes Drugs Cause Hypoglycemia?

Posted on June 19, 2015 | Comments Off on Which Diabetes Drugs Cause Hypoglycemia?
From 97 to 90 mg/dl

You shouldn’t notice low blood sugars unless under 65-70 mg/dl (3.7 mmol/l)

DRUGS THAT RARELY, IF EVER, CAUSE HYPOGLYCEMIA

Diabetics not being treated with pills or insulin rarely need to worry about hypoglycemia. That’s usually true also for prediabetics. Yes, some type 2 diabetics control their condition with diet and exercise alone, without drugs.

Similarly, diabetics treated only with diet, metformin, colesevalam, sodium-glucose co-transport 2 inhibitor (SGLT2 inhibitor), and/or an alpha-glucosidase inhibitor (acarbose, miglitol) should not have much, if any, trouble with hypoglycemia. The DPP4-inhibitors (sitagliptan and saxagliptin) do not seem to cause low glucose levels, whether used alone or combined with metformin or a thiazoladinedione. Thiazolidinediones by themselves cause hypoglycemia in only 1 to 3% of users, but might cause a higher percentage in people on a reduced calorie diet. Bromocriptine may slightly increase the risk of hypoglycemia. GLP-1 analogues rarely cause hypoglycemia, but they can.

DRUGS THAT CAUSE HYPOGLYCEMIA

Regardless of diet, diabetics are at risk for hypoglycemia if they use any of the following drug classes. Also listed are a few of the individual drugs in some classes:

  • insulins
  • sulfonylureas: glipizide, glyburide, glimiperide, chlorpropamide, acetohexamide, tolbutamide
  • meglitinides: repaglinide, nateglinide
  • pramlintide plus insulin
  • possibly GLP-1 analogues
  • GLP-1 analogues (exanatide, liragultide, albiglutide, dulaglutide) when used with insulin, sufonylureas, or meglitinides
  • possibly thiazolidinediones: pioglitazone, rosiglitazone
  • possibly bromocriptine

Click for a review of drugs for diabetes.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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What We Don’t Know About Diabetes Drugs Could Kill You

Posted on December 21, 2014 | Comments Off on What We Don’t Know About Diabetes Drugs Could Kill You
paleobetic diet, low-carb diet, diabetic diet

How about this one?

MedPageToday has an article on the “Bittersweet Diabetes Economy” talking about the cost of treating diabetes, pharmaceutical company influence on diagnosis and treatment of diabetes and prediabetes, and the unknown long-term effectiveness of diabetes drugs. Most of the article pertains to type 2 diabetes. A quote:

Last year, sales of diabetes drugs reached $23 billion [worldwide or U.S.?], according to the data from IMS Health, a drug market research firm. That was more than the combined revenue of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association.

But from 2004 to 2013, none of the 30 new diabetes drugs that came on the market were proven to improve key outcomes, such as reducing heart attacks or strokes, blindness, or other complications of the disease, an investigation by MedPage Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved all of those drugs based on a surrogate endpoint: the ability to lower blood sugar. Many of the new drugs have dubious benefit; some can be harmful.

Another key outcome we don’t know about is prevention or postponement of death in type 2 diabetes via drug therapy.

Now you have some inkling of why I exhort my patients to maximize diet and exercise interventions before resorting to drugs, increasing drug dosages, or adding more drugs. (I’m not talking about type 1 diabetes here.)

RTWT.

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Metformin: More Effective in Blacks Than Whites

Posted on October 30, 2014 | Comments Off on Metformin: More Effective in Blacks Than Whites

Diabetes Self-Management has some of the details.

The implication is that the genetically determined physiology of black diabetics is different from whites. There could be other explanations, admittedly.

 

Here’s why I bring this to your attention. You don’t see me review many scientific articles involving mice, rats, pigs, or rabbits. In fact, I hardly ever read them. I take care of human patients. I suspect there are too many genetic differences between us and them that clinically pertinent studies are rare.

If you read my blogs carefully, you’ll also note I often hesitate to generalize clinical study results from one ethnic group to others. The different black/white responses to metformin validates my approach.

Type 2 diabetes in whites and blacks may not be the same disease, and it could be different in Asians, Australian aborigines, and North American Native Americans. For that matter, Ethiopian black diabetes may not be the South Africa black diabetes.

You may also be starting to understand why there’s so much confusion about which diabetic drugs are the best. We have 12 different classes of drugs now; what’s best for me may not be best for you.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is probably more homogenous across ethnic and national boundaries.

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Which T2 Diabetes Drugs Are Popular in the U.S.?

Posted on February 12, 2014 | 2 comments
Better living through chemistry

You may be able to avoid some of these through diet and exercise

Diabetes Care recently published results of a survey covering 1997 to 2012. The focus was on T2 diabetics age 35 or older:

“Between 1997 and 2012 biguanide [metformin] use increased, from 23% … to 53% … of treatment visits. Glitazone use grew from 6% in 1997 to 41% of all visits in 2005, but declined to 16% by 2012. Since 2005, DPP-4 inhibitor [e.g., Januvia] use increased steadily, representing 21% of treatment visits by 2012. GLP-1 agonists [e.g., Byetta] accounted for 4% of treatment visits in 2012. Visits where two or more drug compounds were used increased nearly 40% from 1997 to 2012. Between 2008 and 2012, drug expenditures increased 61%, driven primarily by use of insulin glargine [e.g., Lantus] and DPP-4 inhibitors.”

We have 12 classes of drugs for the treatment of T2 diabetes now. It’s not entirely clear which ones are the best. Since the long-term side effects of many drugs are unknown, if I had T2 diabetes I’d try to limit my need for drugs by restricting my carbohydrate consumption, maintaining a reasonable weigh, and exercising. And, no, they don’t always work.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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