Around 9-10% of adults aged 20-79 years are living with diabetes today—that’s over 450 million people! Diabetes has been rising worldwide and continues to rise even higher at an escalating rate. It is a chronic disease that affects the body’s ability to make insulin or use the insulin it produces, which often impacts a person’s blood sugar levels. With great prevalence in the population, it’s important to be cognizant of diabetes, how it arises, and how to treat it. Many biotech and pharmaceutical companies are constantly working to find new ways to effectively treat such a widespread disease. Zealand Pharma, a Danish biotech company, recently announced FDA approval of a new medicinal injection called Zegalogue that can treat severe hypoglycemia in people with diabetes.
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Hypoglycemia is a condition of diabetes in which a person’s blood glucose (sugar) levels fall below the normal range of 80-120 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). Glucose is the main energy source for the brain and bodily functions, so any decrease in glucose can lead to symptoms such as lightheadedness, shakiness, sweating, and nausea. Surprisingly, mild cases of hypoglycemia can actually happen to anyone when they are fasting, exercising excessively, or drinking lots of alcohol. Oftentimes, many people are unaware that their blood sugar is low in these situations, so it is important to monitor blood sugar levels and be aware of the symptoms associated with hypoglycemia even if you are not diabetic.
A more extreme condition called severe hypoglycemia occurs mostly in individuals taking insulin to treat their diabetes. A person experiencing severe hypoglycemia has blood glucose levels below 40 mg/dL. In these cases, blood glucose suddenly drops so low that the patient becomes unable to function normally due to acute mental and physical changes. In this case, emergency glucagon is usually administered to quickly raise the patient’s blood glucose levels. Although blood glucose levels typically rise within minutes, glucagon’s effect on blood glucose only lasts for a short time. Zealand Pharma’s new Zegalogue drug, however, produces a successful increase of at least 20 mg/dL in blood glucose levels upon injection, without the need for any further intervention within 45 minutes!
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The newly FDA-approved drug Zegalogue is administered as an injection to treat severe hypoglycemia in diabetic patients aged 6 or older. In Phase 3 clinical trials, Zegalogue effects were studied in children, aged 6 to 17, as well as adults with type 1 diabetes. Across the adult and pediatric trials, blood glucose recovery occurred in only 10 minutes following Zegalogue administrations, compared to 30-45 minutes in the placebo group. In the adult trials, 99% of patients showed recovery within only 15 minutes.
Drugs such as Zegalogue show continuing promise for the development of even more efficient treatments for widespread diseases such as diabetes. It’s important to bring awareness to the prominence of diabetes by educating others of its risks, symptoms, and prevention methods. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, we can see the approval of a drug that can completely cure all diabetic patients.
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