March 6, 2023 – More than 80% of U.S. adults with type 2 diabetes meet the standards to make use of recent treatment drugs akin to semaglutide, marketed under the name Ozempic, in accordance with a new study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
However, only about one in 10 patients who meet the standards have taken these drugs lately, the study found. In addition, among the drugs will not be suitable as first-line treatment for these patients due to their high price. Most individuals with type 2 diabetes are initially prescribed metformin, but other drugs are often added as well. Some of the newer drugs are actually beneficial as first-line treatment for some.
“It's critical that we continue to research the best ways to treat type 2 diabetes (including medications and lifestyle changes), but it's also important to explore the extent to which these methods are available to people,” says lead creator Shichao Tang, PhD, a researcher within the Division of Diabetes Translation at CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention.
“This includes investigating how many people use certain aids or medications and how many people are eligible for them. That was the goal of this study,” says Tang.
A 2022 report from the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes recommends the usage of certain medications for patients with type 2 diabetes, akin to Ozempic, which is given as a weekly injection, while other similar medications can be found as every day injections and oral tablets.
The reason for that is that these recent drugs not only lower blood sugar levels, but in addition reduce the danger of diabetes complications akin to heart and kidney disease in comparison with older drugs. They also result in weight reduction.
The researchers estimated that of the 22.4 million adults within the United States diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, about 82.3 percent would meet the beneficial criteria for taking medications from these two recent classes. About 94.5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes would also recommend these medications.
However, through the study period, only 3.7% of those that met the standards used them, and only 5.3% of those eligible for the oral tablets used them.
About 9.1% were using either before the most recent 2022 guidelines, which approved the drugs as first-line treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes.
Based on retail prices on a US-based websiteFor example, a 30-day supply of an oral tablet medication can cost about $550 to $600 monthly, while traditional injectable medications can cost just a few hundred dollars for a every day injection or nearly $1,000 for a weekly version.
Previous studies suggest that the 2 kinds of drugs may very well be cost-effective as second-line treatments, the authors note, but current costs would wish to fall by 70% for them to be cost-effective as first-line treatments.
Further studies are needed to find out whether the brand new treatments are cost-effective as first-line drugs for certain patient subgroups.