New treatments for type 2 diabetes

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has become a burden for society, and the incidence of the disease continues to increase. A range of therapies is available to control glycaemia in T2D patients; however, these drugs have undesired side-effects and there is a need to develop improved treatments. Extensive research in diabetes has led to a better understanding of the disease and therefore to the design of new therapies. Incretin-based therapies are of special interest because they have numerous advantages over traditional treatments, for example, they do not produce hypoglycaemia and they induce weight loss, reduce appetite, provide β-cell protection, and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. There are two different incretin therapy approaches: glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors. In this article, the incretin-based therapies available on the market are described and compared with the traditional therapies to control diabetes. Finally, preventive steps are pointed out as an option to control diabetes, which has become a pandemic of the twenty-first century.

Keywords:

• Diabetes
• Diabetes treatments
• Incretin
• GLP-1
• DPP-4
• Obesity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrew Curnock for proofreading this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Cascales

Laura Cascales holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Queensland (Australia). After her PhD she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), where her research focused on the development of drugs to treat diabetes. Currently, she is a Project Manager at archimed medical communication AG (Switzerland). She joined EMWA in 2012.