MOTUDI study - influencing weight with insulin therapy in type 2 diabetes patients in the Czech Republic
Abstract
Insulin is still considered to be the most effective treatment in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. However, concerns still remain about gaining weight in association to insulin therapy.
In our retrospective survey of 189 patients (105 women and 84 men) with T2DM who were commenced on insulin therapy for poor diabetes control, we looked at the development of their weight and glycated haemoglobin in the first years after switching to insulin. The mean age at diabetes diagnosis in our cohort was 50.7 years and the mean time from manifest diabetes to initiation of insulin therapy was 9.7 years.
The patients increased their weight from 85.53 kg at initiation of insulin therapy to 88.90 after four years, but failed to reach the maximum weight they had had before detecting diabetes (91.78) and approached their weight at T2DM diagnosis (87.98). The higher the patients weight/BMI prior to diabetes, the greater was the weight loss prior to administering insulin, and the longer the time period between manifest diabetes and initiation of insulin therapy, the higher was the decrease in BMI.