Dear Dave:
You asked a very good question and I would like to comment on that.
The mechanism of how pramlintide works is different than all the other diabetic drugs. While insulin tells the target cells (your liver, muscle and fat cells) to take up sugar and fat from your blood, the WLA's diabetic drug and LGND's potential diabetic drug (it can ba a great frug although it is many many years away from an FDA approval for diabetes) all tell those cells to listen to insulin better. On the other hand, pramlintide slows down the rate at which digested foods in your stomach become sugar and fat in your blood.
Although insulin and amylin are deficient in type I patients, most of these patients' target cells are normal, they respond to insulin very well. So, for type I patients, those drugs pretty much provide no help. That is why WLA and LGND are not targeting the type I population. They do not in any way compete with pramlintide in type I.
The type II is a different story. Here the majou problem is most patients' target cells don't listen to insulin very well. So, the drugs that can increase the sensitivity of your cells in response to insulin can help a great deal. As amylin works through a totally different way, in theory, amylin can be combined with those drugs in type II patients.
As any combination of drugs without formal clinical trials is potentially dangerous as David Bofdanoff pointed out before on this thread, you never hear people complain about combining anything with insulin. The reason is insulin is your own hormone, it is in your body all the time. The same goes for pramlintide. It is a slightly modified form of body hormone called amylin. So it will be much safer to combine amylin with another drug than let's say to combine the WLA and LGND's drugs. In my view, pramlintide will be used a lot by type II patients if get approved on the merit of reducing body weight alone. Many type II patients have obesity, so SEVEN pounds reduction on average is nothing to sneeze at.
I hope I answered your question.
D.Right |
