A recent study indicates that new oral diabetes drugs may provide a number of promising benefits over insulin. Insulin has been the standard treatment for managing blood sugar levels in diabetics. Researchers from Karolinska Institute in Sweden conducted an analysis to determine how newer oral diabetes drugs stand up against the use of insulin with regards to mortality risk, heart disease and severe blood sugar incidences in patients.
The researchers looked into a group of 21,758 adults with type 2 diabetes for a period of one and a half years. One group of participants were given insulin to manage their disease. The other group was given new glucose-lowering drugs or GLD’s for treating the said disease. They took either a newly prescribed DPP-4 inhibitor or an SGLT-2 inhibitor like dapagliflozin. The researchers then looked into all-cause mortality risks, heart disease as well as severe hypoglycemia cases in the two groups.
The researchers found out that treating patients with the new GLD’s was associated to a 44 percent lower risk for all-cause mortality. Patients also experienced a 15 percent lower risk for fatal as well as for non-fatal heart disease. Those who took the new GLD’s also had a 74 lower risk of severe low blood sugar.
Between the two types of new GLD’s, the treatment using dapagliflozin was associated to a lower incidence of all-cause mortality and heart disease while treatment using DDP-4 inhibitors was only associated to a lower risk for all-cause mortality. However, use of the DDP-4 inhibitors was linked to a 69 percent lower risk of severe blood sugar while the use of dapagliflozin did not show any major difference risk when compared to insulin for incidence of severe low blood sugar levels.
Source: Diabetes Daily