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Diabetes treatments enter market
Nearly 1,000 people pushed into a Washington ballroom at the American Diabetes Association's annual convention, causing security guards to turn people away.
The object of adoration wasn't a movie star or even a person, but rather a diabetes drug called Byetta, which helps to lower blood sugar.
The new drug sold nearly $100 million in the past three months, partly because of an intriguing side effect: It helps people lose weight.
'I saw a man crying because he couldn't get in,' wrote Kelly Close, who attended the event in June and compiles Diabetes Close Up, an industry newsletter.
Diabetes care used to be dominated by insulin, which comes in long-, intermediate- or rapid-acting forms and must be injected daily.
But as the diabetes meeting showed, a cavalcade of new products is turning diabetes into something of a shopping experience.
More than a half-dozen new drugs are crowding pharmacists' shelves along with a handful of improved devices to monitor blood sugar or deliver insulin more efficiently.
Even the 84-year-old insulin treatment is trading in the stodgy needle for a sleek new inhaler; for the first time it can be breathed in as a powder in a product called Exubera.
While all the new treatments have flaws -- nearly 40 percent of Byetta takers experience nausea, for instance -- the products give insured patients options they haven't had before. Increasingly, doctors are turning to a mix-and-match of new and old treatments, looking for combinations that will hold blood sugar in check and stave off crippling complications and even death.
The potential market is so vast that even mediocre products can become successful. Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with 21 million estimated patients, according to the diabetes association, and growing by 1 million every year.
One in every three people born in 2000 in this country will develop diabetes, the group predicts.
Most patients do not have their blood sugar under control, the group said, making diabetes the major cause of amputations in the United States. If unchecked, the disease also causes heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, dental disease and sexual dysfunction. People with Type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, recent research has shown.
Among the array of new products to treat diabetes and its complications is an insulin pump that doesn't require a catheter; a foot thermometer that measures inflammation to prevent ulcers; and a glucagon kit with picture instructions that family members can use to give an injection, warding off low blood sugar.
But the torrent of new products isn't going to reverse this disease. 'It's more of an evolution than a revolution,' says Stuart Weinzimer, a diabetes specialist at Yale, who has conducted clinical trials coupling insulin pumps with glucose monitors to regulate blood sugar in children.