The treatment of type 2 diabetes is complicated.
For a successful treatment, the patient has to work hard (lifestyle changes), and the general practitioner (GP) has to treat not only the diabetes itself, but also high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. There is a lot to do. If you should be the patient, can you do it all? Would it not be easier if there were new antidiabetic drugs?
And there are new antidiabetic drugs, the GLP-1 analogues, for example liraglutide, and the sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors, for example empagliflozin. Are they worth it?
In 2016, several pharmaceutical-company-sponsored clinical studies showed that the new antidiabetic drugs, when added to the standard treatment of type 2 diabetes, lower cardiovascular risk by 1.6% to 2.3%.
However, the endpoint (i.e. what was measured) was relatively unclear, and there are a number of further important caveats against the new antidiabetic drugs. The American Diabetes Association and the Deutsche Diabetes Gesellschaft do not recommend using the new antidiabetic drugs as first-line treatment. Be careful.