Oral Hypoglycemics
No matter how you feel about taking medicine to help manage your diabetes, you have to admit that today... there are a lot of options to choose from! Are any of them perfect? No. Do they have side effects? Yes. But the point is that you have options - Amy Campbell
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Very-Low-Carbohydrate Diet vs. Oral Diabetes Medication
A recent study by Kaiser Permanente and Yale Medical Center found that severe hypoglycemia is quite common in people with Type 2 diabetes who take insulin-stimulating medications. This was true regardless of level of control, meaning those with elevated blood sugar and A1c levels experienced low blood sugar as well as those who were within or below their A1c goal. Severe hypoglycemia is defined as a blood glucose level less than 50 mg/dL and is associated with increased risk for heart attack, stroke, loss of consciousness, and death, particularly when it occurs during sleep. Its symptoms can be frightening and include sweating, shaking, dizziness, unsteadiness, and heart palpitations.
Although…
Resources
Oral Antidiabetic drugs (OADs)
Lifestyle interventions like diet modification, exercise, and weight loss are the first line of management for type 2 diabetes. If the lifestyle changes are unable to achieve the target blood sugar levels, then it is advisable to start with the antidiabetic drugs. There are many classes or groups of medicines available for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and they work in different ways.
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This may surprise you, but many of the methods used to lower blood sugar such as insulin or oral hypoglycemic drugs actually make the problem worse.
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A widely-used family of drugs called sulfonylureas (Avandia and Glipizide, for 2 examples) was found to increase heart attacks, strokes and death by about 20 percent, when compared to patients who took metformin (another widely-used diabetes drug) alone.
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A review of the efficacy and safety of oral antidiabetic drugs
Several new oral agents have been approved for type 2 diabetes management in recent years. It is important to understand the efficacy and safety of these medications in addition to the older agents to best maximize oral drug therapy for diabetes. Of the recently introduced oral hypoglycemic/antihyperglycemic agents, the DPP-4 inhibitors are moderately efficacious compared with mainstay treatment with metformin with a low side-effect profile and have good efficacy in combination with other oral agents and insulin. They are a recommended alternative when metformin use is limited...
Oral Diabetes Medications Fact Sheet
Any sulfonylurea or meglitinide can cause blood glucose levels to drop too low (hypoglycemia). Metformin or the glitazones rarely cause hypoglycemia unless taken with insulin stimulators (sulfonylureas or repaglinide) or insulin injections. Acarbose or meglitol, taken as prescribed, does not cause hypoglycemia. However, hypoglycemia can occur when acarbose or meglitol is taken in combination with other oral diabetes medications.
Oral Hypoglycemic Agents in pregnancy: An Update
The evidence of this study supports the use of glyburide and metformin in the management of Type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes with no increased risk of neonatal hypoglycemia or congenital anomalies. The safety of these oral hypoglycemic agents are limited to the prenatal period...
Oral hypoglycemic agents: do the ends justify the means?
Glyburide has replaced insulin as the first line of therapy in the treatment of gestational diabetes in the United States. Glyburide and metformin therapies were reported to be comparable to insulin yet also cost-effective, patient-friendly, and potentially compliance-enhancing. Recently, the efficacy of the use of these oral hypoglycemic drugs has been questioned.
What Are My Options?
There are different types, or classes, of drugs that work in different ways to lower blood sugar (also known as blood sugar) levels:
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Very-Low-Carbohydrate Diet vs. Oral Diabetes Medication
"It's important to note that it's not the HbA1c that directly causes hypoglycemia; it's the therapies we use to lower it." Exactly.
Antranik.org
We’re going to go over these four classes: ◦Sulfonylureas ◦Biguanides ◦Thiazolidinediones ◦Miscellaneous
Diabetes.co.uk
This section includes information about oral hypoglycaemic drugs and dosage, side effects, conflicts with other drugs and more.
FPNotebook
Oral Medications for Type 2 Diabetes.
Joslin Diabetes Center
It is important to know the name of your diabetes medicine (or medicines), how it is taken, the reasons for taking it and possible side-effects.
Patient
Oral hypoglycaemic agents are the group of drugs that may be taken singly or in combination to lower the blood glucose in type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes can be due to increased peripheral resistance to insulin or to reduced secretion of insulin. They should be used together with changes in diet and lifestyle to achieve good glycaemic control, and it is customary to monitor such changes for three months before considering medication. Oral hypoglycaemic agents are not usually used in type 1 diabetes,1 but metformin may be of use in overweight type 1 diabetics
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