Diabetes drug progressing in mid-stage trials

The pharma company Eli Lilly &Co has announced that their experimental once-weekly drug dulaglutide, which is being developed for treating patients with type 2 diabetes, has met its mid-stage trial targets.
The most recent trial for dulaglutide involved testing its impact on both heart rate and blood pressure, a requirement by the health regulator in the United States to ensure new drugs do not raise the chances of heart attacks. It involved 755 adults who had type 2 diabetes and were on one or more oral diabetes medication, and showed that its effect of the treatment on systolic blood pressure was about the same as that of a placebo. Of the participants in the study, around two thirds had a pre-existing diagnosis of hypertension.
The tests found that dulaglutide was also able to substantially lower or average blood glucose levels (or HbA1c) during the course of a three-month trial period as compared to a placebo at the end of 16 and 26 weeks. However, there were some typical adverse events recorded by the non-inferiority trial, from gastrointestinal problems such as nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting.
In addition, the company noted that a 1.5 mg dosage of dulaglutide presented statistically substantial reductions in average 24-hour systolic blood pressure as compared to a placebo during superiority testing.