During the one-year study, patients using Exenatide showed improvements in three important measures of blood glucose control: fasting blood glucose, postprandial blood glucose, and hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C). Exenatide treatment also resulted in an average reduction in body weight, the companies said.
The American Diabetes Association recommends a target HbA1C – a measure of a person's average blood glucose level over a three-month period – of less than 7%, which 32% of study participants achieved.
In addition, patients on Exenatide lost an average of 2.5 kilograms, while those receiving biphasic insulin aspart gained an average of 2.9 kilograms. Weight gain is a common side effect of insulin therapy.
Professor Michael Nauck, a lead author of the study, said: “These data show that Exenatide, without the inconvenience of dose titration, is a potential alternative to biphasic insulin aspart for the treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes not adequately treated with metformin and a sulfonylurea, commonly used oral antidiabetic agents.”
Exenatide is the first in a new class of medicines known as incretin mimetics and was approved for use in the United States by the FDA in April 2005 for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Exenatide is injected twice daily. Lilly is awaiting approval for exenatide in the European Union.