A drug used to control blood sugar in diabetics may prevent kidney disease or slow its progression, a new study shows. Chronic kidney failure in diabetes patients is the leading cause of millions of deaths each year, while hundreds of thousands of people require dialysis to stay alive. The study tested the diabetes drug Invokana from Janssen Pharmaceuticals. The results were discussed at a medical meeting in Australia on Sunday and published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Around 7 million Germans and more than 420 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes. And in most cases it is type 2, also known as diabetes. A common complication of diabetes mellitus is damage to the kidneys, known as diabetic nephropathy.
The study used canagliflozin, a drug used to treatTyp-2-Diabetes, tested. It belongs to a group of medications called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 or SGLT2 inhibitors. They lower blood sugar by causing the kidneys to eliminate sugar from the body through urine.
The study included 4,401 patients aged 30 and older with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. These patients took either canagliflozin or a placebo from March 2014 to May 2017. The effects of the drug were monitored over a period of 3, 13 and 26 weeks.
The researchers found that in the canagliflozin group, the relative risk of death from renal causes was 34% lower and the relative risk of end-stage renal disease was 32% lower. The group also had a lower risk of death from heart attack, stroke or hospitalization for heart failure.
Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson, sponsored the study. Canagliflozin is currently not on the market in Germany.
The study was carried out in theFachzeitschrift “The New England Journal of Medicine" published
