Antidiabetic

Initially, type 2 diabetes is treated by lifestyle and dietary measures (a balanced diet, returning tophysical activity...). When necessary and if these initial measures are not enough, your doctor will introduce a treatment strategy with oral or injectable antidiabetic agents. These are obviously more effective when they are combined with the lifestyle and dietary measures as described above.

Apart from insulin, there are three main groups of treatments which belong to different treatment classes. These are all oral antidiabetics, apart from the incretins –which have recently arrived on the market and which are injectable.

Medicines for insulin resistance

• Biguanides
• Glitazones

Insulin secretagogues

• Diabetic sulphonylureas (SU)
• Glinides
• Incretin modulators

Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors

All of these treatments are effective. However, none of these classes of medicines act on their own on all of the targets involved in diabetes. For this reason they are often used in combination as dual therapies.

Sources:

• Merck Manual – 4^th edition -
• Association de langue française pour l'étude du diabète et des maladies métaboliques (French Association for the study of diabetes and metabolic diseases), website accessed on 19 April 2011
• Association française des diabétiques (French diabetic association), website accessed on 19 April 2011