Dr Robert Gabbay: New Therapy Options Make It Easier to Manage Patients With Diabetes

There are a growing number of diabetes therapies, which has led to the need to individualize choices based on patient profile, said Robert A. Gabbay, MD, PhD, FACP, senior vice president and chief medical officer of Joslin Diabetes Center.

How do today’s diabetes therapies give physicians better choices in helping people with type 2 diabetes achieve glycemic control?

Literally, there’s never been more choices to help manage diabetes than we’ve had over these last 10 years. Something like 45 new agents have been approved and are on the market, so the choices are greater than ever. That leads to the need to really individualize those choices based on the patient profile, and who that patient is. What are the most important considerations? Do they have cardiovascular disease? Do they have renal disease? Are they at risk for congestive heart failure? Do they have liver disease? Is cost a major driver? All of those things really help to decide which of the various agents are available.

I think, the other big advantages to having these new choices versus some of the older medications is, the older medications were limited by 2 real significant issues: 1 issue being hypoglycemia, and the other issue being weight gain. The newer agents have been able to address those by either, influencing both in a positive way or at least one of them, and, as I mentioned, that the two classes of drugs that lower cardiovascular disease.

So, having all those choices really makes it much better for us to be able to manage our patients with diabetes.