A study published in The Lancet finds that a single daily injection of insulin (insulin glargine) is just as good at helping diabetes patients control blood sugar as an injection that must be administered up to three times a day (insulin lispro). Professor Reinhard G Bretzel (Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany) and colleagues also note that insulin users are more satisfied with the insulin glargine than the insulin lispro.
Bretzel and colleagues tested the effectiveness of the insulin glargine and the insulin lispro in a randomized controlled trial called the APOLLO study. The sample consisted of 418 patients with type 2 diabetes (or adult-onset diabetes) in 69 study sites across Europe and Australia. For all patients, oral hypoglycemic drugs had been unsuccessful in adequately controlling diabetes. Each participant was randomly assigned such that for 44 weeks, 205 individuals injected insulin glargine once daily at the same time every day and 210 individuals injected (205 individuals) injected insulin lispro three times per day.
“A therapeutic regimen involving the addition of either basal or prandial insulin analogue is equally effective in lowering haemoglobin A1c. We conclude that insulin glargine provides a simple and effective option that is more satisfactory to patients than is lispro for early initiation of insulin therapy, since it was associated with a lower risk of hypoglycaemia, fewer injections, less blood glucose self monitoring, and greater patient satisfaction than was insulin lispro,” conclude the authors.
Once-daily basal insulin glargine versus thrice-daily prandial insulin lispro in people with type 2 diabetes on oral hypoglycaemic agents (APOLLO): an open randomised controlled trial
R G Bretzel et al.
The Lancet 371(9618). March 28, 2008.
Written by: Peter M Crosta