Data from Australian researchers may shed light on why a diabetes drug trial was recently halted due to its remarkable effectiveness.
This research has also revealed how anti-obesity drugs, like Ozempic, function, a mystery until now.
The FLOW trial, investigating the drug semaglutide’s impact on the progression of renal impairment in people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, was stopped early in November due to the drug’s exceptional efficacy.
The halt to the trial may be partly explained by the research led by Associate Professor Melinda Coughlan of Monash University.
Published in Kidney International, this study demonstrates that a drug targeting the hormone GLP1 interacts with a receptor called RAGE to control kidney damage, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes.
The discovery of RAGE’s significance suggests new therapeutic targets for preventing kidney disease in individuals with diabetes, which affects up to 40% of people with diabetes.
Associate Professor Coughlan highlights the improvements in diabetic kidney disease (DKD) management over the years.
While better blood glucose and blood pressure control has had a positive impact, some individuals still progress to end-stage kidney disease or experience cardiovascular events.
“Our study offers a potential way to prevent kidney disease in those who have been resistant to treatment so far,” she notes.
Professor Mark Cooper, another study co-author from Monash University’s Central Clinical School, suggests that understanding how the RAGE receptor functions in diabetes could also clarify the mechanisms behind obesity drugs like Ozempic.
While these drugs were originally developed to address diabetes, they are also known to aid in weight loss. However, their mode of action, especially in reducing diabetic complications like kidney disease, has remained unclear.
Cooper explains, “We know that the RAGE receptor promotes kidney injury, but by blocking interactions between drugs like Ozempic and this RAGE receptor, we now have new information that can help us expand and develop new drugs to protect the kidney.”
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that eating more eggs is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and how to eat to reduce heart disease death risk if you have diabetes.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about high-protein diets linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by one-third.
The research findings can be found in Kidney International.
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