This medical innovation in diabetes treatment is turning out to be an absolute gold mine of potential health benefits, judging by the findings of this Karolinska Institute study showing that treating type 2 diabetes patients with GLP-1 agonists could reduce their risk of developing dementia
’ They found that patients who used GLP-1 agonists had a 30 per cent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who used sulfonylureas, and a 23 per cent lower risk compared to those who used DPP-4 inhibitors.
"This is important because it can help doctors make better decisions about which medicines to use for older patients with type 2 diabetes," says lead author Bowen Tang, a PhD student in Sara Hägg’s research group at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. “However, proper randomized trials are needed to establish with certainty that GLP-1 agonists reduce the risk of dementia.”
Again, we need to ask who sponsored the “study”, and why? The media was atwitter about another supposed, surprise, unexpected, benefit of this stuff, the other day. The narrative on this stuff has gone from “it is helpful for diabetics”, to “everyone should take this stuff to lose weight”, and now “everyone should stake this stuff to forestall dementia”. Where will the hype train go next?
Hi Steve - thanks for your response
Just because social media/ influencer nut jobs and their deluded followers get off on such hype doesn’t mean that the benefits aren’t there to be eked out by such studies, regardless of whether they are sponsored by the concerned drugmaker(s)
Have you come across either Novo Nordisk or Lilly etc. making ridiculous claims like “everyone should stake this stuff to forestall …”?
Until then, it would do us all a lot of good to focus on the facts, until they are proven wrong.
It isn’t “nut jobs”, it’s the local and national “news”, that works in the drug hype along with the daily “severe weather” hysteria, and fawning over “celebs”.
On the local Detroit “news”.
Far down in the print version of the “report” on the web site is this note:
The new study, paid for by the company, included more than 17,500 people in 41 countries.
This “report” is just as much advertising as a recent piece on the ABC evening national news hyping the recent movie “Inside Out 2”, talking about how many people are flocking to see it. The movie is a Disney release. The ABC network is owned by Disney. The ABC national news was passing of intracorporate advertising as “news”.
Have you noticed that it’s mid June, not even to the All Star Game yet, and the media is already hyping teams with “a chance at a wild card spot” in the playoffs, in October?
You don’t see a problem with the inherent conflict of interest? Remember how the preliminary results of Moderna’s covid vax trials were leaked just in time for company honchos to profit via their stock options?
And I am confident that when ABC news reported this, they made sure the viewers were aware that Pixar is owned by Disney is also the owners of ABC andABC news.
Meanwhile the story is covered by the New York Times. On the front page.
By the Washington Post. On the front page. By Fox News. At the top of the news feed. By Apple News. As the lead story in Theater. And likely by every single newspaper and magazine in America. Why? Because it’s interesting!
A study of 17,000 people has a reasonably good chance of being accurate, or at least of finding things worth following up. If you wait for some independent source which has the money to do a study on 17,000 people, and is untainted by the whiff of conflict, you are likely to wait a very long time, perhaps forever, and likely never. That isn’t to say these things should be accepted at face value, but then neither should they be cast aside as though they don’t exist.
There’s a reason People Magazine has a larger circulation than The Economist. Here’s a tip: don’t invest in media based on your own predilections, you will lose you shirt.
The article says the results were released (not leaked), then they sold the stock, so the execs were acting on the same information everyone else had.
And sure, this is likely a result Novo Nordisk wanted, but it was a double blind study, and it was a big population. Like all studies it needs to be replicated, but someone has to pay for the testing. The developer gets all the financial rewards, so I think it is fair the pay for the testing.
Interestingly, the majority stockholder of Novo Nordisk is a non-profit foundation, that was created to advance health care outcomes.
Moderna issues a press release on May 18, 2020, touting their vax, just in time to pump the stock to benefit the honchos who had registered to sell shares at that time.
