Article Excerpt
Whether or not blood-sugar-lowering medication is suitable will depend on things like the age at which type 2 diabetes starts. Many older people with type 2 diabetes have slightly higher blood sugar levels than normal and they don’t cause any problems. When type 2 diabetes develops in older age, it rarely leads to nerve and blood vessel damage. Other conditions like high blood pressure are often more of a problem then.
People with type 2 diabetes often have other risk factors as well, like high blood pressure. It is then quite likely that treating those other factors with medication will lower the risk of a heart attack or stroke more effectively than keeping blood sugar levels down. The main types of medication are:
- Blood-pressure-lowering drugs (antihypertensives)
- Low doses of acetylsalicylic acid (the drug in medicines like “Aspirin”) for preventing blood clots
- Statins for lowering cholesterol levels
Medications for type 2 diabetes (antidiabetics) include:
- Metformin: This drug reduces the amount of glucose produced by the body, and has been used for a long time.
- Sulfonylureas: These drugs help the body to produce more insulin.
- Glitazones: Treatment with glitazones aims to strengthen the effect of the insulin made in your body.
- Glinides: Glinides include the drugs nateglinide and repaglinide. They increase insulin production in the body.
- Gliptins (dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors): Gliptins also stimulate the production of insulin.
- Gliflozins (SGLT2 inhibitors): Gliflozins include the drugs dapagliflozin, empagliflozin, ertugliflozin and canagliflozin. They cause more sugar to leave the body in urine, lowering blood sugar levels.
All people with type 1 diabetes have to inject insulin. People with type 2 diabetes usually only need insulin if treatment with tablets doesn’t reduce their blood sugar levels enough.
Incretin mimetics are hormone-like drugs that can be injected in addition to taking metformin and/or sulfonylurea tablets. They stimulate the pancreas to make more insulin. Examples of these drugs include liraglutide, dulaglutide, lixisenatide, exenatide, semaglutide and albiglutide.
Incretin mimetics are not supposed to be used instead of antidiabetic tablets, but can be used instead of, or in addition to, insulin. These drugs are injected under the skin with a pre-filled pen. It is not yet clear whether treatment with incretin mimetics has any long-term advantages. The possible side effects include nausea and vomiting.
Relevance
This article talks about some of the different drugs directly associated with regulating your blood glucose levels. Many of these drugs proctor the pancreases to create more insulin, some work on lowering sugar levels directly. This information is something I felt I needed a better understanding on if I will be working on medical devices within this area. Many if not all of these drugs require daily pills to keeps your blood sugar levels in regulation.
Even though I am not the person in this situation who will be prescribing or choosing certain medications, I feel it’s important to know what it is the current methods of treatment attempt to do. With knowing the current treatments, I can consider other possible ways of achieving that same goal, but maybe through a different route. The different technologies that the medical world has access to in this day provide endless opportunities for new an innovative treatment methods.
Sources
Hui, H., Tang, G., & Go, V. L. W. (2009, June 12). Hypoglycemic herbs and their action mechanisms – chinese medicine. BioMed Central. https://cmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1749-8546-4-11
Oral hypoglycemics are anti-diabetic drugs designed to help people with type 2 diabetes manage their condition. Diabetes. (2023, October 29). https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-medication/diabetes-and-oral-hypoglycemics.html
U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2023, December 18). Type 2 diabetes: Learn more – what medications help in type 2 diabetes?. InformedHealth.org [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279506/
