News from the research teams

14.05.2007
Well-known anti-arthritis drug shows promising results for the treatment of type 2 diabetes
In a Danish-Swiss research project published April 12 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine the drug Kineret has been tested on patients with type 2 diabetes with striking results. Kineret improves blood glucose regulation and insulin production, and may be able to stop the cell-death process in the insulin-forming cells that leads to reduced insulin production.

Together with Novo Nordisk and the University of Zurich a group of researchers at Steno Diabetes Center have carried out a research project with the drug Kineret, in which patients with type 2 diabetes were treated with Kineret, a well-known anti-arthritis drug.

The drug works by blocking the effect of a signal substance (interleukin-1, IL-l) in the immune system. The research group has previously shown that IL-1 can provoke the insulin-producing cells to start a cell-death process. From more than 20 years of research in cell-systems and animal models the research group has suggested that the signal substance plays an important part in the degradation of the insulin-producing cells in connection with type 1 diabetes, but clinical proof-of-principle is still to be provided. That IL-1 is also involved in a similar manner in type 2 diabetes is novel and surprising. When the effect of the signal substance was blocked using Kineret for 13 weeks in patients with long-lasting, poorly regulated type 2 diabetes, blood glucose regulation and insulin production were improved, and perhaps more insulin-producing cells survive, although this remains to be proven in man.

“Further trials are necessary in order to be able to optimize the dose and assess the long-term effect of the treatment”, says Professor Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen, leader of the Danish part of the team. The article Larsen CM et al Interleukin-1-receptor antagonist in Type 2 diabetes mellitus. N Engl J Med 2007; 356: 1517-26) can be downloaded from www.nejm.org