Heart Disease :: CHICAGO study – Two blood sugar drugs evaluated

Another late-breaker presented here was the appropriately named CHICAGO Study, in which 462 patients with type 2 diabetes were randomly selected at Chicago heart clinics to receive treatment with pioglitazone or with glimepriride.

Pioglitazone is a thiazolidinedione used to control blood sugar.

Drug efficacy was measured by changes in carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), a marker for atherosclerosis.

Theodore Mazzone, M.D., professor of medicine and pharmacology and chief of the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that after 72 weeks, CIMT decreased by a mean of 0.001 mm in the pioglitazone group versus a 0.012-mm increase with glimepriride.

Dr. Mazzone said the effect of pioglitazone on CIMT was present regardless of patient age, hypertensive status, gender, years with diabetes, obesity, extent of glucose control or use of statins.


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