NICE looks set to back ‘triple therapy’ diabetes drug

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has provisionally recommended dapagliflozin for treating type 2 diabetes in “triple therapy”.

Under its final draft guidance, dapagliflozin (Forxiga) can be added as a third drug if a diabetes patient is already taking two drugs but they are not controlling their blood glucose.

Once final guidance is published, dapagliflozin will join two other similar drugs, empagliflozin (Jardiance) and canagliflozin (Invokana), as options for triple therapy.

All three drugs are already recommended for use on their own if a patient cannot use metformin or other specific drugs, or in combination with metformin as dual therapy.

This final draft guidance is now with consultees, who have the opportunity to appeal against it, said NICE.

Until it issues final guidance, NHS bodies should make decisions locally on the funding of specific treatments. If subsequently recommended, the NHS must make sure the drug is available within three months of the guidance publication date.

Professor Carole Longson, director of the NICE centre for health technology evaluation, said: “Tailoring treatments for type 2 diabetes to each person’s individual needs is essential and having a range of drug options makes this easier.

“This guidance plans to recommend dapagliflozin in triple therapy – only in combination with metformin and a sulfonylurea – which will widen the choice available,” she said.

“We’ve been able to speed up this appraisal, going straight to final draft stage because we plan to recommend dapagliflozin,” said Professor Longson.

She added: “This should help final guidance to be published sooner, and so benefit people more quickly.”

https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/policies-and-guidance/nice-looks-set-to-back-triple-therapy-diabetes-drug/7011288.article?blocktitle=Today

Drugs must be safer than the unproven benefits of low carb right 

Oh goody!. Buy shares now and use the profits to buy cheese.

Yep if you've any cash to spare shares in big pharma is a sure winner, just be careful to choose the right company to invest in cos Diabetes drug price war likely to claim more casualties 

Just a while back I was reading (here?) that insulin prices were being massively jacked up. Hopefully this has now misfired.

Also a few years back there were more than 60 new "diabetes" drugs in the pipeline, not that they will all come to market, but this gives some idea the drug companies see us as a cash cow.

David Unwin is saving up to £45 000/year from low carbing. He or someone calculated that this would save the NHS nearly half a billion a year if all other doctors followed suit. Another way of looking at it is that the drug companies would LOSE half a billion a year. No wonder doctors are not told how to achieve this.