INSULIN is a hormone that the pancreas produces to help transport sugar from the blood into cells. For a person with diabetes, either their body does not produce enough insulin, or it cannot use it efficiently.

Using insulin is an effective treatment, but the injections can be difficult to administer and painful, and some find it embarrassing. These and other barriers can keep people from using the medication correctly or at all.

To reduce these obstacles, researchers around the world are looking for more patient-friendly ways of delivering insulin. Recently, a team from the U.S., Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, and Italy tested the efficacy and safety of a new injectable form of insulin used only once a week.

The findings of the team’s two studies indicate that the new injectable may be a viable option for people currently injecting insulin once a day or more often.

The studies appear in the journal Diabetes Care.

The two new trials assessed the safety and efficacy of a modified version of insulin called insulin icodec.

This has a long half-life, roughly 196 hours, making it ideal as a once-a-week treatment. Half-life refers to the time that it takes the body to metabolize and excrete half of the original dose of a medication.

Both of the studies were phase 2 trials. These can include 100-300 participants with the same health-related issue who receive doses and use or undergo treatment methods shown to be safe in earlier phase 1 studies.

In both of the new trials, every participant was also taking an oral glucose-reducing medication that was not insulin, such as metformin. The studies were then randomized, which means that the participants were randomly assigned to get further doses and medications.

Both were also open-label trials, which means that the researchers and participants knew what treatments they were using.

Each study was conducted slightly differently and included varying numbers of participants with type 2 diabetes who were from different countries.

One study included 205 participants, from the U.S., Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Croatia, and Slovakia, who were not currently using insulin.

In this trial, the participants were screened for two weeks, received treatment for 16 weeks, and followed up for five weeks. The study tested three ways of adjusting and optimizing insulin dosage. The goal was to see which lowered blood sugar levels the most while preventing them from dipping too low.

The other study included 154 participants, from the U.S., Canada, Czechia, Italy, and Germany, who already use insulin. The researchers followed them for 23 weeks to assess how best to transition from daily to weekly insulin injections.

Both studies found that insulin icodec was just as effective as the commonly used daily insulin glargine injections.

The researchers also found that transitioning from a daily injectable form of insulin to a weekly insulin icodec injection was safe and well-tolerated.

In addition, participants who used a double dose of insulin icodec as their first injection reached optimal glucose target levels faster than those who did not.

“An extensive phase 3 program is underway, which encompasses six studies that evaluate both patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and patients new to insulin and those already experienced with insulin,” writes Dr. Ildiko Lingvay, lead author of one of the study papers. “It will realistically be a minimum of two years before such therapy might be available on the market,” she cautions.(SD-Agencies)