Drugs prescribed for Type 2 diabetesv could be doing the patients more harm than good, especially for those over the age of 50.
The drugs come with negative side effects such as weight gain and the burden of administering insulin shots the University of Michigan Health System reported.
The findings appeared in yesterday's edition of Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
The findings suggest current guidelines that recommend intensifying treatment until a person's blood sugar level has evened out is causing more negative impacts to patients than is worth the benefits.
"For people with type 2 diabetes, the goal of managing blood sugar levels is to prevent associated diabetes complications, such as kidney, eye and heart disease, but it is essential to balance complication risks and treatment burdens when deciding how aggressively to treat blood sugars," said lead author Sandeep Vijan M.D., M.S., professor of Internal Medicine at the U-M Medical School and research scientist at the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
Many patients reap little benefit from intensive blood sugar treatments once have reached moderate levels of glucose control. The positive effects of these drugs also decline with age.
"If you're a patient with fairly low complication risks, but are experiencing symptoms from low blood sugar, gaining weight or find frequent insulin shots to be disruptive to your daily life, then the drugs are doing more harm than good. Prescribing medicine isn't just about reducing risks of complications, but also about helping patients improve their quality of life," Vijan said.
The findings exclude the 15 to 20 percent of people who have Type 2 diabetes and very high blood glucose levels and require more aggressive treatments to keep their disease under control. Individualized treatments should be recommended by each patient's physician.
"Drugs that lower blood sugar levels are extremely beneficial in some patients but offer almost no benefit for others. These results have major implications for the millions of people who are currently being told that they need to increase medication in order to achieve their 'glucose goal,'" said senior author Rodney Hayward, M.D., professor of medicine in the U-M Medical School and senior research scientist at the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
