two new treatments to slow the progression of the disease

Two new drugs that help slow the progression, in its early stages, of type 1 diabetes, are the subject of a recent publication in an English medical journal. Medicines not yet available on the French market, for a disease which affects more than 250,000 people in our country.

Martin Ducret, doctor and journalist at Doctor’s Dailytells us today about two new drugs that help slow the progression, at its early stage, of type 1 diabetes, a disease that affects more than 250,000 people in France.

franceinfo: Before talking about these treatments, explain to us what diabetes is?

Martin Ducret: Diabetes is a chronic disease which manifests itself by hyperglycemia, that is to say an excess of sugar in the blood. There are two types: type 1 diabetes – which occurs in children, adolescents or young adults – is secondary to the autoimmune destruction of the cells of an organ of the digestive system, the pancreas.

It can then no longer produce a hormone essential for lowering blood sugar, insulin. Without insulin, sugar builds up and becomes toxic to the human body. Patients with type 1 diabetes have no other choice than to administer insulin several times a day, the only treatment to stay alive.

Type 2 diabetes, much more common, affects overweight or obese adults. In this case, there is no destruction of the cells of the pancreas, the disease is due to resistance of the cells of the human body to insulin, and also to less production of insulin by the pancreas. Management is then different from that of type 1 diabetes, and there are many medications to treat it, not just insulin.

The two innovative drugs in question, which are each the subject of a recent publication in the New England Journal of Medicinetherefore concern type 1 diabetes?

Yes exactly. The first, teplizumab, is a preventive treatment that delays the onset of the disease by neutralizing T lymphocytes, the immune cells responsible for the destruction of the pancreas. “This medication concerns patients at risk of type 1 diabetes, mainly children, and would give them 2 to 3 years before the onset of the disease,” Professor Jean-François Gauthier, head of the endocrinology and diabetology department at the Lariboisière hospital in Paris, and president of the French-speaking diabetes society, explained to me.

“The second, Baricitinib, is an anti-inflammatory which slows down the destruction of cells of the pancreas. It is administered in the first days following diagnosis and helps reduce the intensity of the disease and probably the occurrence of complications, all with very few side effects.” These two drugs, not yet available on the French market, therefore strengthen the therapeutic arsenal to treat type 1 diabetes which until now only had insulin as the only treatment.