New Diabetes Medications Having Positive Effect On Patients' Hearts

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - You could call them double-duty drugs.

Doctors are finding some new medications to treat diabetes are also having positive effects on patients' hearts.

Anthony Gallo has had diabetes for nearly seven years.

He also has high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which are all risk factors for heart disease. In fact, he did have a scare.

"I was having chest pain," Gallo said.

The stress test was normal. But, his blood sugars had been higher than ideal, so he was started on a new medicine, in a class of medicines recently studied for any cardiac risks or benefits.

This type of study is important, because some diabetes drugs of the past, such as rosiglitazone, had a pattern of increased heart attack and death.

The drugs more recently studied were Jardiance, which causes kidneys to dump sugar out of the body, and Victoza, which has a more hormonal action.

When these new classes of diabetes medicines were tested, developers wanted to make sure the drugs would lower blood sugar and at least do no harm. With these new drugs, there were fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths.

"Fewer patients had those events, which is a big deal," Dr. Travis Wilson, of Canonsburg Hospital Cardiology, said. "Those numbers were on the order of what we see with statins. So, these are not little incremental improvements. These were really kind of dramatic results."

"They felt it was probably not due to glucose lowering, but more likely due to direct effects on blood pressure and weight," Dr. Patricia Bononi, of West Penn Hospital Endocrinology, said.

This is based on two studies of thousands of patients with known heart disease randomly assigned to get the medicines or placebo, and not knowing which they were getting.

There are some remaining questions: Is this effect drug specific, or class specific? And, what about cost?

"They tend to be expensive so you have to weigh all the risks and benefits for the particular patient to make that decision," Dr. Bononi said.

"These studies have been looking at clinical outcomes. I'm sure that we'll see studies forthcoming that look at cost analysis," Dr. Wilson said.

With the new drug, Gallo was concerned about the potential for yeast infections, dehydration, and frequent urination, especially at work.

"Sometimes I just can't take a break to go," he said.

But, he thought the benefits outweighed the risks. On the new medicine, his blood pressure is lower and he lost some weight.

"I've been on it three months now, I've lost eight pounds," he said.

His blood sugars are also better and he feels better.

"So far, I'm doing well," he said.

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