A new drug to help diabetics lose weight and control their blood sugar is being trialled in 11 clinics around New Zealand.
An initial trial of the drug, ZGN-1061, had promising results in relation to weight loss and glucose control in overweight or obese patients with type 2 diabetes who did not use insulin.
Dr Richard Carroll, an endocrinologist in Wellington who is helping run the study in the area, said the phase one trials saw patients lose 10% to 12% of their body weight over a matter of weeks and hoped phase two would be just as positive.
‘‘We’re talking about 5% weight loss being beneficial [for diabetes patients]. It’s a degree of weight loss that we haven’t yet seen in one medicine alone. It’s promising data,’’ he said.
About 250,000 New Zealanders had diabetes, he said, most with type 2, and many more had not been diagnosed or had pre-diabetes.
Today is World Diabetes Day and around the world more than 422 million people live with diabetes. In 2015, an estimated 1.6 million deaths were directly caused by diabetes, with more attributed to high blood glucose.
With such a high prevalence of diabetes, and the latest figures suggesting almost a third of New Zealanders were obese with a further 35% overweight, more treatment options were needed, Dr Carroll said.
