Obesity drug may help Type 2 diabetes

Obesity drug may help Type 2 diabetes: "Obesity drug may help Type 2 diabetes
Last Updated: Friday, October 27, 2006 | 2:02 PM ET
CBC News

An experimental obesity drug also appears to help reduce the health risks from Type 2 diabetes, researchers say.

The Sanofi-Aventis drug rimonabant, also called Acomplia, reduced risk factors for heart disease in people with Type 2 diabetes compared with those taking a placebo, European researchers report in Friday's online issue of the medical journal The Lancet.

Diabetes is a leading cause of heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and amputation. It kills more than 40,000 people a year in Canada.

In Type 2 diabetes, weight gain, poor nutrition and lack of exercise reduce the ability of insulin manufactured by the body to control levels of glucose (blood sugar) properly, producing a condition called insulin resistance.

Prof. Andre Scheen of the University of Liege in Belgium and his team studied 1,047 overweight and obese people with diabetes who did not respond to standard treatments.

The participants, who lived in 11 countries in Europe and North and South America, were randomly assigned to take either 5 g or 20 mg of the drug daily or a placebo for one year.
To be continued.

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