Semaglutide eliminated the need for insulin in 70% of patients with newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes: study

Type 1 diabetes may be able to be treated with semaglutide—with dramatic results. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that after recently diagnosed patients with Type 1 diabetes took semaglutide, 70% didn’t need insulin after six months. The study was small, looking at 10 patients diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the past three to six months. Read: Shortage of diabetes and weight loss drug Ozempic expected in Canada: manufacturer They were given a low dose of semaglutide, basal insulin and insulin at mealtimes. As the study continued, the researchers increased their amounts of semaglutide and reduced the insulin they took at mealtimes. “Within three months, we were able to eliminate all of the mealtime insulin doses for all of the patients,” Dr. Paresh Dandona, the senior author of the paper and a Professor at The State University of New York at Buffalo’s Department of Medicine, said in a press release. “Within six months, we were able to eliminate basal insulin in seven of the 10 patients. This was maintained until the end of the 12-month follow-up period.” The mean HbA1c level of the patients fell from 11.7 at diagnosis to 5.9 at six months and 5.7 at a year. The American Diabetes Association recommends seven as a maximum. Read: Global diabetes cases on pace to soar to 1.3 billion people in the next 3 decades, new study finds “Our findings from this admittedly small study are, nevertheless, so promising for newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients that we are now absolutely focused on pursuing a larger study for a longer period of time,” said Dandona. In his previous research, Dandona discovered that “a significant proportion of such diabetics still have some insulin reserve in the beta cells of their pancreas,” he explains. “This reserve is most impressive at the time of diagnosis when 50% of the capacity is still present. This allowed us to hypothesize that semaglutide, which works through stimulation of insulin secretion from the beta cell, could potentially replace mealtime insulin administration . . .. As we proceeded with the study, we found that even the dose of basal insulin could be reduced or eliminated altogether in a majority of these patients.” The most common side effects of the medication were nausea, vomiting and appetite suppression. Many people lost weight, which would be a positive for many, as half of patients with Type 1 diabetes are overweight or obese. “We were definitely surprised by our findings and also quite excited. If these findings are borne out in larger studies over extended follow-up periods, it could possibly be the most dramatic change in treating Type 1 diabetes since the discovery of insulin in 1921,” says Dandona. Read: Health Canada assessing if drugs used to help with diabetes and weight loss increase the risk of suicide

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