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Single pill cuts diabetes complications
Drugs that lower blood pressure in people with diabetes are genuine life-savers
A combination pill used to lower blood pressure could significantly reduce serious health complications suffered by people with diabetes and save thousands of lives every year, according to research reported at the annual European Society of Cardiology congress.
People with the condition are more prone to cardiovascular disease because high blood sugar levels over long periods of time can damage blood vessels. They are also more at risk of suffering heart attacks, stroke, kidney damage and vision problems.
The Australian study, published online in The Lancet medical journal, looked at 11,000 patients with type 2 diabetes aged 55 and above over a four-year period. Although around half of the volunteers were already taking drugs to combat high blood pressure, half had normal blood pressure. Volunteers were given either a placebo or a tablet used to treat high blood pressure containing angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor (perindopril) and diuretic medicine (indapamide).
The team found that the combo pill (marketed in the UK by Servier as Coversyl Plus) reduced the risk of death from heart-related problems and kidney failure by 18 per cent. Patients benefited from taking the combined tablet regardless of whether they had high blood pressure at the start of the trial.
Lead researcher, Professor Stephen MacMahon at The George Institute for international Health in Sydney, said that the results represent an important step forward in health care for the millions of people with diabetes worldwide.
‘This treatment reduced the likelihood of dying from the complications of diabetes by almost one fifth, with virtually no side effects,’ said Professor MacMahon.
At present only those diabetic patients with high blood pressure are offered medications such as ACE inhibitors and diuretics. The ACE inhibitor reduces blood pressure by relaxing the blood vessels while diuretic drugs remove excess fluid from the body by increasing the flow of urine.
However, writing in an accompanying editorial in The Lancet, Norman Kaplan of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center pointed out that other blood pressure drugs could work just as well at a fraction of the cost since the ACE inhibitors and diuretics are available in generic form to do much the same job as the branded combined pill.
‘The fixed combination of perindopril and indapamide could be the best possible protector against hypertension-related consequences for patients with type 2 diabetes, but I believe that other drugs - if they lower blood pressure as much and do not have metabolic side effects - would be as protective as this combination treatment,’ said Kaplan.
MacMahon agreed that other medicines could achieve the same desired results. ‘Clearly there's a broader message here that lowering the blood pressure of everybody with diabetes is critical to avoiding complications,’ he concluded.
Diabetes currently affects 1.9 million people in the UK; about 10 per cent of people over 65 have type 2 diabetes.
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