A Recent Study Suggests Salsalate, a Common Pain Killer, May Help to Treat Type 2 Diabetes

Remarkable discovery, a very common pain reliever that everyone uses, may actually help control blood sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes. Now to clarify, this is extremely early information. I do not want anyone to try to use this information to manage your diabetes, but it is extremely interesting and showing great potential.

The drug we are talking about is Salsalate, this is a non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, also known as a NSAID. These medications are used to treat inflammatory processes such as Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The results of a preliminary study does show that Salsalate reduces blood glucose levels and even helps with glycemic control for a variety of doses for people with type 2 diabetes. However results do show an increase in protein in the urine. Increased protein in the urine does indicate damaged kidney function. So long term safety will obviously need further study.

Type 2 Diabetes is also known as non insulin dependent diabetes. It is the most common diabetes and it is different from type 1 diabetes in that your body still does produce some insulin. Oral glycemic agents are usually enough to keep blood sugars under control.

An interesting detail is that researchers say that the first reports of studies with salicylate based drugs used for the treatment of diabetes were first published over a century ago.

One of the basis for this study is that inflammation is one of the causes of insulin resistance in the cells that leads to high blood glucose levels. In fact, aspirin has been shown to lower blood glucose, but the problem has been the high dose needed. So the side effects are too dangerous to continue pursuing its use. This is one of the main causes to have another look at Salsalate. It has the same active ingredients of aspirin but with much fewer side effects.

The preliminary study utilized 108 subjects, all with type 2 diabetes. They were each given 3, 31/2 or 4 grams of salsalate or a placebo each day in addition to their regular diabetes oral hypoglycemic agent for 14 weeks. The results showed that in each person that had the salsalate there was a drop in their blood glucose and Hemoglobin A1c levels (a lab measurement of blood sugars over a period of time).

There was also the added benefit of having the markers for heart disease risk and glycemic control also show improvement. Also there was no noticeable benefit of any one dose of salsalate over another. Just taking the drug in any dose seemed key. However, there was the negative concern of developing protein in the urine for those that took the salsalate.

The study group was too small to be a formidable result. But still researchers are excited and larger studies will be forthcoming.

The point is, the research being done in diabetes is immense and new strides are made each day. This is just a small chapter in a huge book of research. But hope is always on the forefront.

Source:

WebMD.com

Type 2 Diabetes