Silvio Inzucchi, MD: Diversifying Treatments for Cardiovascular Events

In a presentation at The Metabolic Institute of America’s (TMIOA) 2021 Heart in Diabetes sessions in New York, NY, Silvio Inzucchi, MD, Professor of Medicine at Smillow Cancer Hospital at Yale Medicine, acknowledged that glucose-lowering methods alone could not significantly reduce risk of stroke in patients.

In order to reduce stroke risk in patients in patients with diabetes, Inzuchci suggested clinicians look beyond the specific event and the traditional methods for treating it, which led to research regarding anti-diabetic medications and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor GLP-1 agonists.

Earlier studies, such as the PROactive study, showed that the anti-diabetic medication pioglitazone was used to reduced major cardiovascular events by 16% in patients with type 2 diabetes and macro-vascular disease.

In an interview with HCPLive, Inzucchi noted how drugs like pioglitazone and new emerging drug classes with GLP-1 agonists could be used to prevent strokes and other cardiovascular issues.

In addition to preventing individual cardiovascular events, some of the drugs and treatment methods featured in the presentation were used to treat a wide array of cardiovascular complications, which Inzucchi believed is a crucial aspect of cardiovascular research.

“I think that it's important to talk about how drugs can prevent specific events,” Inzucchi said. “But broadly speaking, we're using these drugs to prevent all events, and I think that's one of the important take home messages.