Aug 29th, 2020 - Add patients with chronic kidney disease with or without diabetes to the growing list of people who get proven benefit from treatment with an SGLT2 inhibitor. Dr Hiddo Heerspink In the DAPA-CKD trial, treatment with the sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor dapagliflozin (Farxiga, AstraZeneca) cut the incidence of substantially worsened chronic kidney disease (CKD) by an average of 3...

Oct 23rd, 2019 - In a count of U.S. specialists able to give type 2 diabetes care in the U.S., cardiologists came out on top, researchers reported. Topping off at nearly 23,000 cardiologists across the U.S. in 2016, there were an estimated 81 incident diabetes cases per cardiologist that year, ranging from 30:1 in the District of Columbia to 154:1 in Alaska, according to Ravi Patel, MD, of the Northwestern Univ...

Oct 20th, 2019 - The FDA approved dapagliflozin (Farxiga) to reduce heart failure (HF) hospitalization risk in adults with type 2 diabetes at elevated risk due to established cardiovascular disease or multiple risk factors for it, AstraZeneca announced. Dapagliflozin is the first selective inhibitor of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) to gain that particular supplemental indication. Just last month, SGLT2...

Oct 1st, 2019 - The diabetes drug dapagliflozin (Farxiga, AstraZeneca) provides substantial benefits to patients with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, even to those without diabetes, according to results of the DAPA-HF trial. The trial results were presented at the meetings of both the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in September ...

Sep 30th, 2019 - WASHINGTON -- In another label expansion, the FDA approved new cardiovascular and renal prevention indications for canagliflozin (Invokana), according to a statement from the Janssen unit of Johnson & Johnson. The SGLT-2 inhibitor is now indicated for preventing end-stage kidney disease, worsening renal impairment, cardiovascular death, hospitalization for heart failure, and diabetic nephropath...

Sep 25th, 2019 - When low-income patients with high blood pressure fill their prescriptions at certain New York City pharmacies, they walk away with $30 in vouchers to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables at the city's farmer's markets. The city's "Pharmacy to Farm Prescriptions Program" has reached more than 1,000 hypertensive SNAP recipients since it launched in 2017, and has grown from 3 to 16 participating ...

Sep 21st, 2019 - PodMed Double T is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech. In it, Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange, MD, president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, look at the top medical stories of the week. A transcript of the podcast is below the summary. This week's topics include appropriate revascularization after heart atta...

Sep 12th, 2019 - Spurred on by the big win with dapagliflozin (Farxiga) in DAPA-HF last week, the sodium glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors appear poised for broader use in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and are even eyeing cases with preserved EF. While some members of this type 2 diabetes drug class have a cardiovascular prevention indication, DAPA-HF turned the tables by suggest...

Sep 9th, 2019 - A 55-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes and recently diagnosed ulcerative colitis is admitted to hospital with confusion and anxiety. She appears pale, and feels feverish. She notes that she is having heart palpitations and is short of breath. Vital signs upon admission include the following: Body temperature: 39.6° C Heart rate: 112 beats/min Respiratory rate: 26 breaths/min Oxygen saturation...

Sep 6th, 2019 - People with type 2 diabetes (T2D) on sodium-glucose cotransporter (SGLT)-2 inhibitors saw far less progression to kidney failure than T2D patients who didn't receive the agents, according to a meta-analysis. Treatment with either empagliflozin (Jardiance), canagliflozin (Invokana), or dapagliflozin (Farxiga) was tied to a 33% reduction in relative risk for a composite endpoint requiring dialysi...

Aug 20th, 2019 - Confirming widespread anecdotal reports, recent federal survey data indicate that high costs of diabetes drugs drive many patients to cut corners in their treatment regimens. Findings from the 2017-2018 National Health Interview Survey show that nearly one-quarter of adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes (including those on Medicare) asked his or her doctor for a lower-priced diabetes medicatio...

Aug 20th, 2019 - Confirming widespread anecdotal reports, recent federal survey data indicate that high costs of diabetes drugs drive many patients to cut corners in their treatment regimens. Findings from the 2017-2018 National Health Interview Survey show that nearly one-quarter of adults with type 1 or type 2 diabetes (including those on Medicare) asked his or her doctor for a lower-priced diabetes medicatio...

Aug 20th, 2019 - The SGLT2 diabetes drug dapagliflozin (Farxiga) significantly reduced cardiovascular death and worsening of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction in topline results announced from the DAPA-HF trial among patients with and without type 2 diabetes. AstraZeneca called it a clinically meaningful effect. In the wake of TAVR's approval for low-risk patients, an industry analyst predicted a swi...

Aug 16th, 2019 - People with type 2 diabetes reaped multiple benefits when GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) were incorporated into their treatment regimens, researchers reported. In a systematic review and meta-analysis of seven trials reporting major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), use of GLP-1 RAs resulted in a 12% overall reduction in MACE (HR 0.88, 95% CI 0.82–0.94, P<0.0001), Søren Kristensen, MD, of th...

Jul 30th, 2019 - SGLT-2 inhibitors were not associated with increased risk for severe urinary tract infections (UTI) versus other classes of antidiabetic therapies, according to a population-based cohort study. Compared with patients with type 2 diabetes initiating use of a DPP-4 inhibitor, new initiation of an SGLT-2 inhibitor didn't carry a increased risk for a severe UTI (hazard ratio 0.98, 95% CI 0.68-1.41)...

Jul 22nd, 2019 - Eating a plant-based diet was tied to a reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes, according to a review. Pooled data from nine observational studies indicated that high adherence to a plant-based diet was associated with a 23% lower risk for incident type 2 diabetes versus poor adherence to such a diet (95% CI -29% to -16%), reported Qi Sun, MD, ScD, of Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public He...

Jul 18th, 2019 - Women and men with diabetes have different degrees of heart risks, researchers reported from a meta-analysis. Among more than 12 million people analyzed in published studies, women with type 1 diabetes had more than five times the risk for heart failure than in women free of diabetes (risk ratio 5.15, 95% CI 3.43-7.74), reported Toshiaki Ohkuma, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Aust...

Jul 11th, 2019 - Quality of care for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains suboptimal, even among primary care and specialty physicians aware of the patient's diagnosis, researchers found. The analysis of data from approximately 7,000 U.S. office visits showed that the prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension among patients with CKD was 46% in 2006-2008 and 48% in 2012-2014 (P=0.50), reported Sri Le...

Jun 13th, 2019 - Today I'm going to discuss the CREDENCE trial: "Canagliflozin and Renal Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes and Nephropathy."[1] This is a very important trial because it starts shifting us to think about SGLT2 inhibitors as drugs that work to preserve renal function independently of things like glucose lowering or weight reduction. It's also a new way to start thinking about how to treat patients with...

Jun 13th, 2019 - Today I'm going to discuss the CREDENCE trial: "Canagliflozin and Renal Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes and Nephropathy."[1] This is a very important trial because it starts shifting us to think about SGLT2 inhibitors as drugs that work to preserve renal function independently of things like glucose lowering or weight reduction. It's also a new way to start thinking about how to treat patients with...