Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Lilly’s Jardiance was found to reduce the risk of heart complications, making the type 2 diabetes drug the first to lengthen the life of diabetes patients.
The effect of the pill was particularly striking because nearly all of the participants were under standard treatment to control the levels of blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure, with no significant results. The trials found that Jardiance reduced heart complications rates by 38%, deaths from other causes by 32%, and chronic heart failure related hospitalization by 35%.
The study involved more than 7,000 patients from 42 countries all around the world and lasted for about three years. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Lilly were the two companies that funded the study and created the drug.
Heart diseases prematurely kill a couple of million diabetes patients from the estimated total of 386 million sufferers. Therefore, doctors and scientists have shifted their focus from trying to decrease the patients’ blood sugar levels to preventing these cardiovascular complications.
Treatment with Jardiance medication resulted in a reduced risk of cardiovascular related mortality of 32%. The results are good news for type 2 diabetes patients at risk for cardiovascular complications, considering their large number.
Doctors have redressed their attention at the burden of heart diseases caused by diabetes, and Jardiance is the first medication of its kind that has been linked with a significant reduction in mortality caused by such events.
Bernard Zinman, professor at the University of Toronto, Canada said that this study showed that a substance called empagliflozin has shown impressive prevention effects in one out of three CV diseases related deaths.
The life expectancy of type 2 diabetes patients is decreased on average by 10-12 years. More than half of their deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases.
The benefit has been observed over and over again by the team conducting the trials and they are confident that the drug’s capabilities were proven cause and effect successful. Cristopher Cannon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said that the trial results are more than encouraging for health care authorities and diabetic patients. Despite not being involved in the study, Cannon analyzed the papers and said that he was deeply impressed by the medication’s effects, considering that nearly all trial participants were already taking other medications.
Not only that Jardiance has been proven extremely helpful, but the drug also comes with very few side effects compared to older medication. The ketoacidosis incidents in the study participants during these three years never spiked above 0.3%.
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