Lilly, Med Centers to Study Type 2 Diabetes Obstacles

(National Institutes of Health)

Eli Lilly and Company, the Indianapolis pharmaceutical maker, is conducting a study to better understand real-world obstacles that keep people with type 2 diabetes from reaching their treatment goals. In the MOSA1c study — short for Multinational Observational Study Assessing Insulin use: Understanding the challenges associated with the progression of therapy — Lilly is partnering with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School.

As diabetes progresses, people often need to intensify their treatment by increasing their insulin to avoid spikes in blood sugar level that can damage blood vessels. MOSA1c seeks to find out why many people with diabetes who take daily insulin resist this progression of insulin therapy that could help them reach their ideal blood sugar target.

This resistance, documented in studies worldwide, exposes type 2 diabetes patients to an increased risk of serious complications, such as blindness, amputation, heart disease, and kidney failure. Research so far has documented the factors keeping people with diabetes from moving to insulin from oral medications, but there is little data to help understand the barriers to insulin intensification.

The study plans to gather data on insulin use, interactions between people with and treating diabetes, and other factors involved in the progression of treatments used to manage diabetes. The data are expected to cover:

• Factors associated with adherence to insulin therapy, including patient and physician characteristics, treatment regimen and cost, as treatment intensifies
• Geographic and cultural differences that may have an impact on progression of insulin therapy
• Reasons reported by patients and physicians for progression or discontinuation of therapies
• Rates of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) in patients who stay on initial insulin therapy compared to those who increase insulin use.

The research will follow some 4,500 people with type 2 diabetes taking insulin in the U.S. and 16 other countries for two years. Participant recruitment began in July 2011. Interim results from the MOSA1c study are expected to be available in mid-2012.

Read more: Roche, DexCom to Partner on Insulin Delivery Systems

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