S.V. Karnataki
Managing Director & CEO, NMC, P O Box 6222, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abstract:

Diabetes is indeed a very dangerous disease. Diabetes and Obesity are interconnected and their therapy does go hand in hand. One of the main reasons for diabetes is the lack of awareness. This coupled with the lack of convenient access to healthy and nutritious food in a person’s daily life has increased the growth of obesity as well as diabetes among the population.

Evidence based treatment protocol for Diabetes target on three main areas
•           Intensive lifestyle intervention
•           Aggressive management of cardiovascular risk factors
•           Normalization of blood glucose level

Insulin resistance, decreased insulin secretion, increased hepatic glucose output are the hallmarks of Type 2 diabetes.

Each class of medication targets one or more of these defects.

In addition to the medicine other steps for managing diabetes and obesity are
•           Weight loss
•           Controlled diet
•           Consumption of energy dense foods and drinks
•           Consumption of low GI foods
•           Watching the intake of salt in the daily diet
•           Regular Exercise

The strategies that are being adopted now to control blood glucose focus on
•           Reducing insulin resistance
•           Supplementing with exogenous insulin
•           Increasing endogenous insulin production
•           Reducing hepatic glucose production
•           Limiting post prandial glucose absorption

In the new drug discovery Biological targets are rapidly emerging, for example the role of lipotoxicity as a cause of insulin resistance leading to drug targets such as AMP-activated protein kinase activators, recombinant adeponectin derivatives, and fatty acid synthase inhibitors.

Insulin action can be enhanced with small molecule activators or inhibition of protein tyrosine phosphatase-1B.

Defective glucose stimulated insulin secretion by pancreatic beta cells can be alleviated with recombinant glucagon like peptide (GLP-1) or agonist to its receptor.

Oral insulin pills are in the development stage.

Biocon India researchers have developed a new polymer based special coating to keep the insulin molecules from being destroyed by the acid in the stomach also they produced special addictives to help the intestine to absorb the large molecule of insulin.

Biocon India and Amylin work on the production of peptide hormones -the molecular chain of amino acids that circulate through the blood and play an important role to control metabolic diseases.

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