I am almost 60 years old and have had high cholesterol for many years. About five years ago, I found out I had diabetes. I've heard that two new drugs, recently approved, may help both of my problems. True?
Partly. Approval of a drug by the Food and Drug Administration requires several steps. A drug must first be recommended by a committee composed of specialists in the field related to the drug.
Once such a recommendation is made, the FDA administration will usually approve the sale of the drug after reviewing the findings of the committee. Such a committee has recommended the approval of troglitazone (Rezulin), but it still awaits final FDA approval. Atorvastatin (Lipitor) has been fully approved, but the drug will probably not be available in pharmacies for another month or more.
Atorvastatin joins four other "statin" drugs that are safe and widely used for their effectiveness in lowering cholesterol levels. The new drug appears to lower cholesterol somewhat more than the other statins, but its biggest advantage is its effects on blood triglycerides -- the most common lipid abnormality in people with diabetes.
Atorvastatin lowers triglycerides much more than the other statins, which only reduce triglyceride levels by about 10 percent. As a result, people with both high triglycerides and cholesterol are often treated with two drugs -- one to reduce triglycerides and a statin to lower cholesterol.
This approach has the disadvantages of increased costs and possibly more side effects, especially the potentially dangerous one of muscle inflammation (myositis) which can lead to kidney failure if the drugs are not stopped quickly. It is possible that treatment with atorvastatin alone will control both cholesterol and triglycerides.
People like you with adult-onset (or type II) diabetes are uniformly resistant to the action of insulin. In most cases, the insulin resistance is due to obesity, especially the accumulation of too much fat within the abdomen.
The pancreas overcomes this resistance by releasing large amounts of insulin and the result is diabetes, because over time, the pancreas is no longer able to maintain this excessive production of insulin. The best way to prevent and treat this type of diabetes is to avoid obesity or to lose weight if you are obese.
