Tenth of patients to get new diabetes drug

By REBECCA WALSH

A new drug to treat diabetes will soon be widely available in New Zealand, but fewer than 10 per cent of patients will qualify for it.

The drugs, which lower the body's resistance to insulin and work differently to existing drugs, have also been found to reduce the long-term risk of cardiovascular complications.

They are already used extensively in Britain and the United States by people with Type 2 diabetes, but New Zealanders who want to use the drugs must pay full price.

Negotiations between Government drug funding agency Pharmac and the two companies that manufacture the drugs, known as glitazones, will begin before Christmas.

Dr Peter Moodie, medical director of Pharmac, said the drugs were a high priority and it was expected at least one of two brands - Avandia, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, or Actos, produced by Eli Lilly, would receive funding.

Up to 10,000 of the estimated 105,000 people with Type 2 diabetes were expected to be eligible for the drug. It was not a "front-line therapy" and was likely to be used for cases in which existing treatments had failed, he said.

It would cost about $15 million to supply the drug, to be used in combination with existing treatments, to 10,000 people.

At the moment, the two most common drugs used either push the pancreas to produce more insulin or reduce the liver's production of glucose and, to some extent, lower the body's resistance to insulin.

Dr Moodie said those drugs would continue to be used by the majority of Type 2 diabetics.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not make enough insulin or does not use its insulin in a healthy way.

New Zealand is experiencing an epidemic of the disease, which is linked to obesity, poor diet and a lack of exercise. A further 60,000 people are expected to be diagnosed with the preventable disease by 2021.

Diabetes costs the country about $170 million a year, but in 20 years that could rise to $1 billion.

Dr Robyn Toomath, president of the Society for the Study of Diabetes, said depending on how effective the new drugs were it was likely diabetes specialists would push for them to be made available to more people.

"If you could make everyone with Type 2 diabetes thin, that would be the best way of dealing with their medical problem, but if you can't make them thin then this is probably the next best thing you can do."

Dr Ian Griffiths, medical director of GlaxoSmithKline in New Zealand, said the treatment could not be kept out of the country.

"The benefits are too great and the risks of not having a treatment like this, in terms of financial exposure, too high."

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