Researchers from Canada and Germany are collaborating to find new medicine combinations to treat obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
The idea is to create individualized prescriptions that are more effective than single medications and could eventually replace more invasive treatments like bariatric surgery, particularly in youngsters.
“As a pediatric endocrinologist, I can tell you we’re seeing more and more Type 2 diabetes in kids and adolescents, and it seems to be a more aggressive form than adult onset diabetes, so we do need better therapies to achieve even greater efficacy and degree of weight loss,” said Andrea Haqq, a professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.
The researchers recently published a report that looks at the possibility of a number of incretin-controlling medicines. These metabolic hormones cause the body to manufacture and utilise insulin more efficiently. They also inhibit hunger to help with blood sugar control and weight loss.
According to the researchers, combining the medications has various benefits, including increased effectiveness in at least some patients and fewer adverse effects.
Even a 5% weight reduction is considered clinically significant, and patients in some of the combo therapy trials are losing 10% to 15% of their body weight, according to Haqq, who is also a member of the Alberta Diabetes Institute and the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute.
As a pediatric endocrinologist, I can tell you we’re seeing more and more Type 2 diabetes in kids and adolescents, and it seems to be a more aggressive form than adult onset diabetes, so we do need better therapies to achieve even greater efficacy and degree of weight loss.
Andrea Haqq
Timo Müller, director of the Helmholtz Diabetes Center’s Institute for Diabetes and Obesity and a researcher at the German Center for Diabetes Research in Münich, Germany, is collaborating with Haqq’s team.
As part of the partnership with the Müller team, first author Qiming Tan, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, will spend a semester studying in Germany, and a German student will join Haqq’s lab here.
More research is needed, according to Haqq and Tan, to figure out why certain people react differently to the medications. They claim that because some racial and ethnic groups experience a disproportionate burden of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, more trial participants from these groups are required. More research should be done on how biological sex differences affect pharmacological efficacy and safety.
The researchers are exploring at non-pharmacological solutions as well as drug combinations, such as how adding fiber to a person’s diet can help them lose weight and increase the effectiveness of their current diabetes drugs.
