They said the Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltddrug Actos, known  generically as pioglitazone, is the first diabetes therapy  shown to reduce the progression of atherosclerosis. “The results are very striking. In my view, this is really  a breakthrough study,” Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland  Clinic, who led the study, said in an interview. “No one has ever shown any diabetes therapy could slow the  progression of disease. Keep in mind the leading cause of death  for diabetics is cardiovascular disease,” said Nissen, whose  findings were published online in the Journal of the American  Medical Association and presented at a meeting of the American  College of Cardiology in Chicago. Diabetics are especially prone to atherosclerosis, which  involves the build-up of fat, calcium and other deposits in the  arteries. The study, known as PERISCOPE, compared two types of  medications to treat type 2 diabetes — Actos and glimepiride,  an older sulfonylurea drug that is among the most commonly used  classes of diabetes therapies. Actos is in a class of drugs known as thiazolidinediones, a  relatively new group of antidiabetic agents that are known to  raise the risk of heart failure and bone fractures. In the current study, Nissen and colleagues compared the  two drugs to see how well they reduced progression of  atherosclerosis in 543 patients with type 2 diabetes and  coronary disease. The trial took place from 2003-2006 in 97 hospitals in  North and South America. The team used intravascular ultrasound  to measure fatty deposits inside the arteries. Patients took glimepiride or pioglitazone for 18 months and  their arteries were measured again for plaque build-up. While plaque increased 0.73 percent in the glimepiride  group, it fell 0.16 percent in the pioglitazone group. The researchers also looked at maximum plaque thickness and  saw it increased in the glimepiride group and decreased in the  pioglitazone group. “Evidence for a slowing of disease progression has proven a  very challenging end point in recent years with the prominent  failure of several promising approaches,” Nissen and colleagues  wrote in JAMA. Nissen said a single study is not enough to change medical  practice, but it does signal the need for more research on how  different diabetes drugs stack up. Dr. Salim Yusuf of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada,  however, noted that patients in the study who took Actos did  have a significant number of fractures. “We need proper studies in diabetes. This suggests there  may be differences in drugs. We need to test that,” Yusuf told  reporters.
Actos arrests heart disease in diabetics: study.