Actos pioglitazone benefit and risk, side effects of this medication used for blood sugar control

Actos is a pharmaceutical drug that works by increasing the body's sensitivity to insulin, to better control patients' blood sugar. Actos is used alone or in combination with other drugs if needed. While Actos can improve metabolic control in subjects with type 2 diabetes, there is no benefit of adjunctive Actos therapy in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Any individual with diabetes should seriously consider improving their diet by reducing the intake of white bread, white flour, fruit juice more than an ounce at a time, and certainly all kinds of regular sodas that are full of sugar. For a natural sugar alternative, see stevia benefit information. Individuals with diabetes should consider supplementing with ipoic acid.
   A combination of hoodia, ginger, green tea extract, spirulina, acetyl-l-carnitine, choline, and several other herbs and nutrients, as found in Diet Rx, is very effective for appetite reduction. When less food is eaten, there is often a drop in blood sugar levels..
   The diabetes drugs Actos and Avandia raise the risk of heart failure.

Actos pioglitazone diabetes drug
April 2009 - People with diabetes taking a so-called Actos have a modest increase in risk of developing macular edema in which fluid accumulates in the part of the retina responsible for central vision. Drs. Donald S. Fong and Richard Contreras with Southern California Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena looked at data on some 143,000 patients treated with diabetes medications from 2002 to 2006. Of these subjects, about 17,000 were treated with a glitazone drug, mainly Actos. In 2006, 59,000 of the subjects had at least one eye exam, and this turned up almost 1000 new cases of macular edema. Taking Actos increased the odds of macular edema by 60 percent. Drs. Donald S. Fong and Richard Contreras confirm "an association between glitazone use and macular edema." American Journal of Ophthalmology, April 2009.

September 2007 - Giving patients a starting dose of Takeda Pharmaceutical's diabetes drug Actos gives better control of blood sugar and lipid levels than using GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia, according to new clinical trial results presented at a medical meeting in Amsterdam, An analysis of data from the first three months of a six-month head-to-head study of the two drugs found a starting dose of 30 milligrams of Actos was more effective than a starting dose of 4 milligrams of Avandia in improving blood sugar levels. The research on the two drugs, known generically as pioglitazone and rosiglitazone, was presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

August 2007 - The diabetes drugs Avandia and Actos will be labeled with severe warnings about a risk of heart failure to some patients. The makers of the drugs, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., have agreed to add the "black-box" warnings. The warnings, the most severe that prescription drugs can bear, stress the medicines may cause or worsen heart failure and that patients should be closely monitored.

June 6, 2007— The FDA decided to put serious safety warning on two diabetes drugs — Avandia and Actos — whose health risks have become a focus of Congressional concern. The decision comes more than a year after F.D.A. safety reviewers strongly recommended just such a step. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach said the agency was asking the makers of Actos and Avandia to carry a more prominent warning of its heart risks because “despite existing warnings, these drugs were being prescribed to patients with significant heart failure.”

Actos and insulin
Adding the diabetes drug Actos to insulin does not improve blood sugar control and may cause weight gain in adolescents who have type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes who show signs of insulin resistance. In theory, increasing the insulin dosage to overcome insulin resistance should be enough to improve blood sugar control in adolescent type 1 diabetics, note Dr. Jill Hamilton, from the Hospital of Sick Children in Toronto, and colleagues. In the current study, 35 teens with type 1 diabetes took Actos or placebo in addition to standard insulin therapy for 6 months. All of them had suboptimal metabolic control on insulin alone. Participation in the trial was associated with significant improvement in metabolic control. However, Actos was no better than placebo in improving control as determined by favorable changes in hemoglobin A1C (an indicator of blood sugar) as well as the required insulin dose. Moreover, Actos was associated with weight gain. The Journal of Pediatrics, December 2006.