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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Exenatide, a drug commonly prescribed to help patients with type 2 diabetes improve blood sugar control, also has a powerful and rapid anti-inflammatory effect, a University at Buffalo study has shown. The study of the drug, marketed under the trade name Byetta, was published recently in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. "Our most important finding was this rapid, anti-inflammatory effect, which may lead to the inhibition of atherosclerosis, the major cause of heart attacks, strokes and gangrene in diabetics," says Paresh Dandona, MD, UB Distinguished Professor in the Department of Medicine, UB School of Medicine...

A year ago, when 58-year-old retiree B S Wig, saw the scales tip at 149 kg, he was dismayed. He was diabetic and also increasingly obese. His blood sugar hit a dismal 350 mg/dl after meals. The normal should be under 140 mg/dl. "I had become weak and refused to socialise. My life had gone haywire," says Wig. Till he was put on to a new drug, which not only reduced his weight to a healthy 118 kg, but his sugar levels to normal. "I can now be dated," he says happily. Wig is lucky. Most diabetics have difficult lives,...

The users call the drug Lizzie, the Big Brother or sometimes Gilly. On blogs they rave over its uncanny ability to melt away pounds, although some are wary of its side effects, which can include nausea and strange welts. The users are not fad dieters or methamphetamine addicts, but people with diabetes. And the subject of their rhapsodies is not a gray-market diet pill sold on late-night television but Byetta, a federally approved diabetes medicine, available only by prescription, whose popularity and sales have soared since its introduction last June. For diabetics, the weight loss caused by Byetta comes as...

Two new diabetes medications have helped some patients control their weight. Barbara Oster has had diabetes for 15 years, and her medication wasn't working so well, reported WBAL-TV in Baltimore. "It just blows you up, makes you feel like you're gaining all this weight," she said. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved two new diabetes drugs -- Byetta and Symlin -- that studies have proved help patients control their illness and cut back their eating. "One of the lovely side effects of both drugs is people tend to lose weight," said Dr. Paula Yutzy, a diabetes educator at Baltimore's...

Millions of diabetes sufferers throughout the world can thank the most unlikely of all medical heroes - our desert-dwelling Gila monster - for a new and effective drug to control their disease. Just given federal approval, the drug - marketed as Byetta - is made from the saliva of the slow-moving, venomous lizard of the American Southwest. "Well, it's weird. You have to wonder how you can go from Gila monster saliva to something that works in humans," said Sandra Leal, a pharmacist and diabetes expert at El Rio Community Health Center. "But when we explain it to patients, we...

WASHINGTON - Type 2 diabetics got a new option to help control their blood sugar Friday, a drug derived from the saliva of the Gila monster — but one that must be injected twice a day. The Food and Drug Administration approved Byetta, known chemically as exenatide, the first in a new class of medications for Type 2 diabetes — but for now, it's supposed to be used together with older diabetes drugs, not alone. Makers Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly & Co. said the prescription drug would begin selling by June 1, but wouldn't provide a price. Some 18...