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Oral Medications Can Replace Insulin for Many With Rare Neonatal Diabetes |
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Researchers have very good news for most people who were diagnosed with diabetes in infancy: There's a good chance you can switch from injected insulin to an oral medication.
And there's more good news: Those who switch to the oral medication known as sulfonylureas don't appear to have the complications that can trouble those who take insulin, according to two new studies in the Aug. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Patients diagnosed with diabetes in infancy are usually assumed to require lifelong insulin treatment. The striking finding was not just that patients could stop insulin, but in every case, the overall blood sugar was lower without patients having problems with too low blood sugar," said Dr. Ewan Pearson, the lead author of one of the studies who did the work while he was at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England.
Pearson, now a clinician scientist at the University of Dundee in Scotland, added that these findings aren't just applicable to babies being diagnosed right now, but to anyone who was diagnosed with neonatal diabetes. In Pearson's study, they even had a 36-year old who'd been diagnosed with diabetes in infancy respond to treatment with sulfonylureas, which are older medications commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes because they stimulate the production of insulin.
"For those rare people affected by neonatal diabetes mellitus, this is a miracle," said Dr. Mark Sperling, author of an accompanying editorial in the journal and a pediatrics professor at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sperling added that neonatal diabetes probably affects about one in 100,000 people. To be considered neonatal diabetes, the disease must occur within the first six months of life, according to Pearson.
Each of the studies looked at the effect of sulfonylureas on people diagnosed with neonatal diabetes that had certain genetic mutations.
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