Does anyone actually have a proper study report that confirms sulphonylureal drugs kill beta cells or lead to progressive loss of insulin secretion? I have done a load of searches on this subject, and all I can find is forum discussion and blogger spiel and some very biassed reporting in the press. There has certainly been folklore discussion on this matter, but there seems to be no study that actually confirms it. I can find the likes of Bernstein, Mercola, and Jenny Ruhl expounding this hypothesis, but none of them actully refer to evidential proof of the assertions. It seems that the hypothesis relies on the assumption that the drugs
force or
squeeze more insulin out of the pancreas so must be making the cells work harder thus depeleting their lifespan. But there are many other things that damage and destroy these cells. This is what I found
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900074/
1. Zhang et al. Second-Line Agents for Glycemic Control for Type 2 Diabetes: Are Newer Agents Better? Diabetes Care 2014;37:1338–1345
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1425152
I suspect that until recently the progression of T2D towards insulin therpy being necessary was something that was inevitable and so a scapegoat had to be discovered to hang the blame on. This is the 'T2D is a progressive disease' mantra, which many of us here can now challenge.
The recent discoveries into the effect of NAFLD on insulin resistance show that this is a major stress on the pancreas, and now that it seems to be potentially reversible, then this may remove the progessive march of T2D towards self destruction (according to the media and Panorama).
To me NAFLD is far more harmful than my drugs, and hyperglycemia is also potentially fatal, so using glic to fight both these conditions makes sense to me, and in the absence of proof otherwise, I am content to continue using them.