Type 2 diabetes patients who also have asthma are benefitting from a diabetes medication, typically given to help the pancreas produce more insulin, that also improves asthma symptoms and may reduce lung and airway inflammation.
These types of medication — GLP-1 receptor agonists — are a newer class of FDA-approved therapeutics that are generally used in addition to metformin for control of blood sugar or to induce weight loss in patients with obesity.
Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland used electronic health record (EHR) data of patients with asthma and type 2 diabetes who initiated treatment with GLP-1R agonists, finding lower rates of asthma exacerbations and reduced asthma symptoms as compared to those who initiated other type 2 diabetes medications.
“We have demonstrated really for the first time that this class of medications used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity may also have benefit for our patients who have asthma,” said lead author Katherine Cahill, MD, medical director of Clinical Asthma Research in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine at VUMC.
Interesting. I have just been prescribed a type 2 diabetes drug dapagliflozin for heart failure. It is very new to the heart cohort and apparantly improves the ejection faction dramatically. I have not yet taken it. The side effects listed are awful. So I look at the box as though it is going to explode !
I have often read the patient information leaflet on a new prescription and thought "bl.....y hell, I'm not taking that"! Ignorance was perhaps bliss before those things were introduced.Hope all goes well if you decide to take the new medication.
Thank you that is nice of you. Because it removes sugar from the blood it can cause dizziness and urine infections. As I get dizzy anyway because my sugar levels drop by themselves I am not sure. I find the heart drugs more scary than the lung ones. One I was prescribed last year causef a haemorrhage fro my lungs and because there is no literature on it they won't believe me. Ggrrr
I now understand your concern. I don't know that I would want to take it either in the same situation. I wonder if the members on the British Heart Foundation forum would be able to offer you advice. I follow that forum as my husband has heart disease and there are many experienced members. Just a thought LP, and whatever you decide wish you well.
Welcome to the forum. I thank you for taking the time to give your input. On the whole I and probably all the members here, do agree that self medication is not advisable. Other than, of course, for those very few, really desperate, extreme examples outside of normal life.
The relevant, research and studies that I post are all in the public domain, I bring them here to educate. To show that there are in fact, medical advances being made and give hope to members that one day they will alleviate, slow down or stop progression of the chronic lung diseases that we suffer from. Ultimately the news of possible cures. It is a very heavy phycological burden to bare, to have a chronic lung disease that literally, slowly, suffocates the life from you, without a cure. The knowledge that there is a glimmer of light at the end of a long and very dark tunnel exists, even though we know that we may never reach it, brings solace with the hope for others in the future.
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