Cause of Diabetes Affects Treatment

Treating type 2 diabetes effectively may depend on understanding the underlying cause of the disease itself in each person.

A new study shows that people with a certain, inherited form of diabetes respond differently to common diabetes medications than people with other forms of type 2 diabetes.

More than 150,000,000 people worldwide suffer from type 2 diabetes. Most people with the disease are treated with medications that help regulate their blood sugar levels and keep it within safe levels.

These drugs often include metformin (such as Glucophage) either alone or in combination with a class of drugs known as sulfonylureas (including Glucotrol, Diabinese, and others).

But researchers say no previous studies have looked at whether or not different causes of diabetes might affect how people with type 2 diabetes respond to these treatments.

Diabetes Cause Affect Drug Sensitivity

In the study, researchers compared the effects of treatment with a combination of metformin and a sulfonylurea (Metaglip) or metformin alone in 36 people with type 2 diabetes. Half of the participants had an inherited form of diabetes caused by a mutation in the HNF-1 alpha gene, and the other half had type 2 diabetes from unknown causes. This gene causes diabetes by affecting how much insulin is produced by the body, abnormalities in this gene results in a subtype of type 2 diabetes that can be seen in adolescents. The drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes can work either by increasing the amount of insulin produced by the pancreas -- like sulfonylureas do, or by making the body more sensitive to insulin that has already been secreted -- like metformin.

Both test groups had similar rates of obesity and blood glucose concentrations. But those with the inherited form of diabetes had a fivefold greater response to the sulfonylurea drug than to metformin.

Meanwhile, those with an unknown cause for their diabetes responded similarly to both treatments.

Researchers also tested for sensitivity to sulfonylurea and found that people with the inherited form of type 2 diabetes were four times as sensitive than those with diabetes and no known cause.

Researcher Ewan R. Pearson, of Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, UK, and colleagues say the findings show that individualized treatment for type 2 diabetes is crucial to effective management of the disease.

Source: WebMD.

November News Article Index