Study: diabetes drug lowers amputation risk

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/2009/05/22/diabetes_drugs_amputation.html

By MARIA CHENG

Associated Press

Friday, May 22, 2009

LONDON — Doctors who gave diabetics a drug originally intended to lower patients’ cholesterol found it reduced their risk of so-called minor amputation by 36 percent, a new analysis of research says.

Researchers in Australia, Finland and New Zealand studied almost 10,000 patients aged 50 to 75 with type 2 diabetes, the kind linked to obesity. About half of the patients were given fenofibrate, a drug available generically and sold as Antara, Fenoglide, Lipofen and others. The other half got fake pills. After five years, 115 patients had at least one lower limb amputation because of diabetes.

Diabetes can damage nerves and blood vessels. In severe cases, this leads to amputation. About one diabetes patient in 10 loses part of a leg.

The study, first published in 2005, aimed to see if fenofibrate prevented heart disease. It didn’t.

But in this new analysis, experts found patients on fenofibrate had a 36 percent lower risk of a first amputation than those on placebo.

Patients who lost part of their legs were more likely to have heart disease, smoking, skin ulcers or previous amputations. Amputations were labeled minor if they were below the ankle and major if they were above the ankle.

The risk of minor amputations in patients without large vessel disease, the narrowing of blood vessels, was nearly 50 percent lower in the group taking fenofibrates. The risk of a major amputation was not substantially different between the two groups. Taller people were also more likely to suffer amputations.

The results were published Friday in the medical journal Lancet. The study was paid for by Laboratoires Fournier SA, now part of Solvay Pharmaceuticals, which makes fenofibrates, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.