New York, Sep 12 : The risk of type 2 diabetes is reduced by more than half by regular injections of the latest obesity drug semaglutide, which was just accepted in the US and has been formally approved in England according to an upcoming study.Researchers of the study, which will be announced at the annual gathering of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), claimed that semaglutide can reduce the chance of diabetes by 60 percent in patients with overweight.
“Semaglutide is believed to be the most efficacious drug to be used to treat obesity, and is now beginning to close the gap with the amount of weight loss that occurs following the bariatric procedure,” claimed the researcher W.Timothy Garvey from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US.
Obesity is believed to increase the likelihood of Type 2 diabetes by at minimum six times, and the group was interested in knowing if semaglutide might lower the risk.To find out more they conducted a new analysis of the results from two studies of semaglutide.
In STEP 1 1,961 obese or overweight participants were given an injection of 2.4 mg of semaglutide or a placebo every week, for an average of 68 weeks.
STEP 4 involved 803 participants with overweight or overweight or obesity.They all received weekly doses of 2.4 mg semaglutide over 20 weeks.Then, they either stayed on semaglutide, or were changed to placebo over the following 48 weeks.
In STEP 1 participants receiving semaglutide the risk score for 10 years of type 2 diabetes fell by 61 percent (from 18.2 percent at week zero to 7.1 percent during week 68).This is compared to a reduction of 13 percent in the risk score of those receiving the placebo (17.8 percent at week +0, and 15.6 percent in week 68).
Within the STEP 4 participants, the most significant reductions in risk scores could be observed in the initial 20 weeks (from 20.6 percent at week zero to 11.4 percent in week 20).For those who continued to receive semaglutide and the risk score dropped further to 7.7 per cent , however in those who switching to placebo the risk score increased to 15.4 percent.
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