Medicine Reduces Risk of Diabetes Amputations
Doctors stumbled upon a medication that greatly reduces patients’ risk of “minor amputation” onset by diabetes. The physicians gave diabetics a drug originally intended to lower their cholesterol and were astonished to see that they were 36 percent less likely to require a limb removed, a new analysis of research says. In Australia, Finland and New Zealand, researchers studied about 10,000 patients, between 50 and 75 years old who had type 2 diabetes, the kind linked to obesity. Half of them were given fenofibrate, a drug available generically and sold as Antara, Fenoglide, Lipofen and others. The other half were given fake pills. After five years, 115 patients had at least one lower limb amputation because of diabetes, which damages nerves and blood vessels, and can lead to amputation in severe instances. About one diabetes patient in 10 loses part of a leg. The study, first published in 2005, aimed to see if fenofibrate prevented heart disease. It didn’t. But in this new analysis, experts found patients on fenofibrate had a 36 percent lower risk of a first amputation than those on placebo. Patients who lost part of their legs were more likely to have heart disease, smoking, skin ulcers or previous amputations. Amputations were labeled minor if they were below the ankle and major if they were above the ankle. The risk of minor amputations in patients without large vessel disease, the narrowing of blood vessels, was nearly 50 percent lower in the group taking fenofibrates. The risk of a major amputation was not substantially different between the two groups. Taller people were also more likely to suffer amputations. The results were published Friday in the medical journal Lancet.
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