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Biotech Science

New Type2 Diabetes Treatment May Provide A Cure 45

Posted by timothy from the bobby-shaftoe's-pal dept.
rusty0101 writes "Over at HealthDay, they have an article noting how a new trial drug for Type2 Diabetes may also help provide a cure to diabetes. Its primary benefit is that it does not have the side effect of causing weight gain; in fact on average people in the trial lost 6.3 lb. Note, this isn't a great way to lose weight, but for many Type 2 diabetics, loosing weight can improve their condition." How comfortable would you be swallowing a drug made from Gila monster spit?
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New Type2 Diabetes Treatment May Provide A Cure More

New Type2 Diabetes Treatment May Provide A Cure

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  • How Comfotable Would I be? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FlipmodePlaya ( 719010 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @04:16PM (#9345801) Journal
    'How comfortable would I be swallowing a drug made from Gila monster spit?'

    About as comfortable as I am eating Pig hoof, or whatever is supposed to be hot dogs, I suppose. It's not like they're going to market it as a 'Gila Saliva Supplement'...

  • How comfortable would you be swallowing... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ForestGrump ( 644805 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @04:20PM (#9345824) Homepage Journal
    a drug made from Gila monster spit?

    No, "it is a synthetic version of the hormone exendin-4, found in the saliva of the Gila monster..."

    Saying the drug is made from Gila monster spit is like saying Rogaine (hair growh thing) is made from rat urine...which it isn't. Rogaine is synthetic. The chemical its made from was originally discovered in rat urnie, however.

    -grump

    • Re:How comfortable would you be swallowing... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @07:32PM (#9346917) Homepage Journal
      My aunt had her leg amputated. My father was ill in general, and died because he was lying in the wrong position. If I have to drink Gila semen to survive (my family has a history of Diabetes, and I'm doing everything to make sure I'm not trapped) I'LL DO IT. You'll find that a lot of our stupid little prejudices dissappear when your life is on the line... I just hope that a change in life practices means that I'm not subject to the same stupidities that did in my ancestores.
      • Amen to that. I was just diagnosed with Type 2 last year. Fortunately we caught it in the early stages (I was barely over the "line") and I seem to be able to control it through watching my diet and daily exercise.

        My sister-in-law, however, is not doing well. Even glucophage has not been able to bring her blood sugar under control. Just recently she began having to inject insulin. She would be a good candidate for this drug.

        Many people who joke about diabetes now probably don't realize that they alre

  • requisite (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How comfortable would you be swallowing a drug made from Gila monster spit?

    I for one welcome our Gila monster overlord!
    • I for one welcome our Gila monster overlord!

      If you stop putting peyote on your corn flakes, you won't have to keep welcoming him...

  • duh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05, 2004 @06:40PM (#9346625)
    "How comfortable would you be swallowing a drug made from Gila monster spit?"

    A better question: Who wouldn't swallow it if it meant the difference between life and death?

    • Re:duh (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      An unfourtunatly large amount of people. There's a surprising amount out there who live in a near state of denial about their illness. I worked in a pharmacy for a while, and we would constantly see people skipping doses because they didn't feel like taking it that morning, or even refusing to get refills of generics because the pills were "the wrong color". A large amount of the time when questioned they would state that they "were healthy people" who were the exception to the rule of whatever they had. It

  • Treatment not cure... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hung_himself ( 774451 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @06:55PM (#9346703)
    Just a clarification, the article never claims it is a cure, just that it is a better drug to control the symptoms of type II diabetes with fewer side effects. It states that whether it actually stops the deterioration of islet cells in humans (which would be a cure) is not known though it does seem to do so in animals.

    Sounds reasonable and looks promising if true.
    • The article says animal tests have shown "formation of new beta cells". If that can be replicated in humans, we may finally have a cure, after 70 years of insulin therapy and it's deleterious effects.

      My personal interest is in type-1, not type-2, as my son suffers from it. Over the years, all the research on cures for type-1 has focused on islet-cell transplants. But if there's something that can grow new beta cells, that's a quantum leap forward and to one side.

      Here's hoping!
  • Can we please at least try to demonstrate the correct use of "lose" in a headline?!? Is the weight chafing at the lead to flee from the patient's body? Arghh!

  • Okay, then. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Rie Beam ( 632299 )
    "How comfortable would you be swallowing a drug made from Gila monster spit?" I don't know. How comfortable are you "swallowing" a "drug" made from "Gila Monster" "spit"? Thank you. I'm here all week.
  • This approach targets only a minor part of the group of diabetes-patients.

    Group 2 diabetes patients have a peripheral resistence to insuline - their cells do not react to all the insuline in their blood.
    It's no big use increasing the insuline load.

    On the other hand, we have some never drugs than the cited metformine already available.

    • Re:forget it... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rob Simpson ( 533360 ) on Sunday June 06, 2004 @04:26AM (#9349040)
      Or rather, their cells don't respond well enough to insulin.

      Type II diabetes can be treated with drugs that increase insulin release (sulfonylureas such as glyburide), drugs that reduce insulin resistance (the biguanide metformin and the new thiazolidinediones* such as rosiglitazone), and drugs that slow the breakdown of carbohydrates (acarbose).

      The drugs that increase insulin release can be very effective at first, but tend to become less so. These are the ones associated with weight gain. They also can cause hypoglycemia which can be dangerous.

      Metformin is old, cheap (generic), effective, and safe(r). It actually can cause some weight loss, and its main disadvantage is that it often causes dose-related diarrhea.

      Rosiglitazone is new, expensive, and very effective, though it can sometimes affect the liver. It causes some weight gain, but this is due to increased plasma volume (fluid retention).

      Acarbose has fairly modest benefits, but can be effective in people who get high glucose levels after a meal, but have low fasting levels, since it smooths out the spike in blood sugar.

      In Type II diabetics, the beta cells usually work overtime to produce enough insulin to have an effect on the resistant tissues and eventually fail - advanced cases may require insulin injections. If this drug does stimulate beta-cell division, it might delay or prevent this eventual impairment.

      *OK, I admit, I had to check the spelling on that.

  • Ironically, because the root cause of Type 2 is insulin resistance in target tissues (and relative, but not absolute, insulin deficiency), increasing the number of beta-cells won't necessarily cure this disease. In contrast, in Type 1, the cause seems to be the autoimmune destruction of beta-cells (resulting in absolute insulin deficiency.) If caught early, and if you can figure out how to modulate the immune system (which has already been tried, and which alone does not seem to modify the course of the disease), then perhaps exenatide could be used to repopulate the pancreas.

    Still, even in Type 2, another treatment would be useful. Incidentally, metformin doesn't cause weight gain either, but exenatide would be useful if metformin fails or is not tolerable by the patient.

    • If caught early, and if you can figure out how to modulate the immune system (which has already been tried, and which alone does not seem to modify the course of the disease), then perhaps exenatide could be used to repopulate the pancreas.

      Eh? I didn't see anything in the article about causing more beta cells to appear - it seemed to imply that the drug affected what the beta cells do:

      The origin of the novel drug, called exenatide, is itself novel. It is a synthetic version of the hormone exendin-4, foun

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