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Biotech / Medical : Pharma News Only (pfe,mrk,wla, sgp, ahp, bmy, lly) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: muddphudd who wrote (1454)	2/19/1999 5:19:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 1722

Diabetes Patients Fare Better When Side-Ailments Treated Bloomberg News February 18, 1999, 7:01 p.m. ET London, Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Diabetes sufferers fare better when doctors tackle disease-related ailments along with the disease itself, a new study shows. A study found that treating diabetes sufferers for high cholesterol, blood-sugar and blood pressure as well as putting them on a low-fat diet, encouraging exercise and getting them to stop smoking slowed development of kidney disease and eye and nerve problems by about 50 percent compared with traditional treatment. It also reduced blood-sugar and blood-pressure levels and cholesterol significantly, researchers said. The four-year study, published in this week's edition of The Lancet medical journal, is the latest in a series of findings that suggest doctors should be using an arsenal of treatments to tackle side-ailments such as cholesterol, hypertension and obesity -- all widespread problems for the world's millions of diabetics. Such studies are good news for companies such as Roche Holding AG, the maker of new obesity pill Xenical, Zeneca Group Plc and its hypertension drug Zestril, and Warner-Lambert Co. and Merck & Co. with their respective anti-cholesterol drugs Lipitor and Zocor. Demand for such products could broaden the diabetic market, which is composed mostly of people who get the disorder later in life and is already expected to triple in size to $7 billion by 2004. Fattier Diets Diabetes, a disorder characterized by the body's inability to regulate blood-sugar levels, is claiming more victims as the world's population ages, eats fattier diets and leads a more sedentary life. In so-called Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, the pancreas fails to produce an adequate supply of insulin. Insulin is the chemical messenger the body normally makes to regulate how glucose, a key source of energy, gets to cells. Patients with Type 2 diabetes often try to bring down the level of glucose, or sugar, in the blood without insulin shots, by relying on pills and changes in diet. Last year at a diabetes meeting, a 20-year study pointed in the same direction. The U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study found that life-threatening diabetes complications such as heart and kidney problems could be greatly reduced if doctors focused on cutting patients' blood-pressure levels, as well as the amount of sugar in the blood. --Marthe Fourcade in the Paris newsroom (331) 5365 5065/ph