Jo’s Cafe

Byetta

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. regulators have approved a diabetes drug derived from lizard saliva for patients who have not responded to other treatments, the drug’s developers, Eli Lilly and Co. and Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc., said on Friday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved exenatide, an injectable drug to be sold under the brand name Byetta, as an additional therapy for patients with Type II diabetes — the most common form — whose blood sugars are not sufficiently controlled by two oral medications.

Why does this interest me — besides being a diabetic — the idea that with it the fear of going too low is mostly removed. There is always a chance of going to low because of other reasons, so I don’t feel the fear is completely gone with any drug.

Exenatide (Byetta), which is a synthetic version of saliva of the Gila monster lizard that lives in the Arizona desert, is the first of a new class of drugs known as incretin mimetics. It mimics hormones, released in the human gut in response to food, that help regulate glucose levels.

A lot of times, I’ve learned, people that are Type II go on insulin and never come off it. Yes, I have met people that have gone off the low dosage, long term insulin (ie: Lantus).

Something to think about and read up more about too.