Diabetes Drugs May Alleviate Asthma
By Chauncey Crandall, M.D.
Researchers discovered that when patients who have Type 2 diabetes and asthma took a certain class of medication to control their blood sugar, their asthma symptoms also improved.
Patients who started taking these medications reported both less asthma exacerbation, with less need for oral steroids and fewer asthma-related symptoms over a six-month period, said study author Dr. Katherine Cahill, medical director of clinical asthma research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, Tennessee.
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The medications, known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, are a newer class of FDA-approved therapeutics used either with metformin to control blood sugar for Type 2 diabetes patients or to induce weight loss in patients who have obesity.
Researchers from several hospitals — Vanderbilt, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and University Hospital Zurich — used electronic health record data of patients with asthma and Type 2 diabetes who started taking GLP-1 receptor agonists between March 2018 and January 2020.
They found fewer asthma symptoms in the patients who took these medications instead of other diabetes drugs. Researchers at Vanderbilt also found that these medications reduce allergic airway inflammation and viral-induced airway inflammation. Patients reported better breathing, and less cough and shortness of breath.