Filipinos to benefit from world’s largest diabetes study

MANILA, Philippines – Diabetics in the Philippines will benefit from an international study which revealed that intensive glucose treatment is key to kidney protection for diabetes patients.

The development in diabetes research was announced Thursday by an organization at the forefront of research and management of the illness in the country.

In a statement, Servier Philippines, Inc. said the new results of ADVANCE (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease ) – the world’s largest ever and most representative study of diabetes – show that compared to standard glucose (sugar) control, intensive blood glucose treatment using Diamicron MR and other drugs as required, protects patients against serious complications of the disease.

“The results of the ADVANCE study give doctors a new strategy for protecting the approximately 250 million diabetes patients in the world, almost 4 million of which are Filipinos,” said Marian Andaluz, corporate relations and regulatory affairs manager of Servier.

The major findings of ADVANCE was presented in a health forum organized by the Philippine College of Physicians.

Servier joined PCP in the diabetes education of Filipinos at the health forum.

Diabetes mellitus is the eight leading cause of death in the Philippines. Globalllly, it ranks as the fourth. The disease may already be considered an epidemic, with the total number of affected people seen to balloon to 380 million by 2025. If not managed well, diabetes could lead to heart attacks, kidney failures, blindness, amputation and obesity.

Aiming to reduce levels of hemoglobin A1-c to 6.5% or below, physicians at Australia’s George Institute for International Health initiated and designed ADVANCE.

The study also involved a group of independent medical researchers from 20 countries worldwide. The same study was recently presented at the American Diabetes Association and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

ADVANCE results show that lowering the hemoglobin A1-c level, a marker of blood glucose control, to 6.5% is a safe and effective way to reduce serious complications of diabetes.

The intensive treatment included the Diamicron MR for all patients to achieve the hemoglobin target. Diamicron MR is generic name gliclazide, a derivative of sulfonylurea, from a class of anti-diabetic drugs used in the management of diabetes mellitus type 2.

Aside from kidney protection, ADVANCE shows that intensive blood glucose lowering treatment also results to:

• 30% risk reduction of development of proteinuria, a well-established marker of increased cardiovascular threat

• a positive trend towards reduction of the risk of cardiovascular death by up to 12%

• 10% reduction of overall risk of serious diabetes complications

• Safely controlled blood glucose

- GMANews.TV