Will Victoza Reign Victorious Over Your Type 2 Diabetes?

When you have type 2 diabetes, the treatment options may feel somewhat limiting. Some medications affect other aspects of your wellness, like your weight, and you might feel the time constraint of multiple daily doses. However, liraglutide (Victoza) is now available and could become your wellbeing drug of choice if you want to avoid both of those situations, but it does come with a few side effects of its own.

According to Philip A. Kern, MD, an endocrinologist and director of the Barnstable Brown Diabetes and Obesity Centre at the University Of Kentucky College Of Medicine in Lexington, injecting Victoza ‘helps the insulin in the body work a little better’. However, this is only a medication for type 2 diabetics, and not type 1, as it prompts the pancreas to secrete more insulin, which regulates your blood sugar levels, and keeps them from becoming too high.

So how does it work? According to clinical study results, Victoza is an effective blood sugar controller compared to a standard therapy and a placebo. These comparative methods only lowered HbA1c (hemoglobin A1c) test results by less than 0.5%, whereas adding Victoza to another therapy lowered these levels by 1.5%. It also did not promote weight gain, which is a real bonus for diabetes sufferers as weight loss is often a key component in diabetes management. With Victoza, your digestion is slower which means you feel fuller on less food and for long periods of time, so you don’t overeat. The results also implied that Victoza reduces the heart disease risks of high blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood fat levels, to which diabetics are susceptible. As a bonus, you only need one injection a day.

Though Victoza is FDA approved as of January 2010, Kern warns there are certain wellness risks that come with taking the drug such as an increased chance of pancreas inflammation, or pancreatitis. Kern says that an increased risk of medullary thyroid carcinoma, a rare form of thyroid cancer found in studies in mice and rats delayed Victoza’s approval, and the FDA requires Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer, to conduct a 15-year registry to determine whether it poses a risk of cancer to people.

Novo Nordisk must also complete an epidemiological 5-year study, evaluating the risk of thyroid cancer, pancreatitis, and other problems associated with taking Victoza, along with a separate study on possible cardiovascular risks. If you take Victoza on top of blood-sugar-lowering oral medications, you are also at risk of hypoglycaemia, or dangerously low blood sugar levels, and there are other lesser side effects, including nausea, headaches, and diarrhoea. Therefore, Victoza isn’t a miracle drug, but it might be the right choice for you so consult your doctor about it.