Blood-Pressure Drug May Slow Diabetes Progression

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2012) — A common high-blood-pressure medication appears to reverse the diabetes-related death of pancreatic beta cells, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham study published March 22 in the journal Diabetes.

The authors argue that the findings — while in human pancreatic islets and diabetic mice — could have clinical implications as physicians consider that calcium channel blockers may address two major, related diseases. They also found evidence in past clinical trials that the study drug verapamil may slow diabetes.

Beta cells secrete insulin to control blood sugar levels, but begin to die as patients develop Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. No one suspected that calcium channel blockers might reverse beta cell death because the studies that led to their FDA approval measured their effect on heart attacks, not blood sugar. UAB researchers were surprised when hints of verapamil’s effect were discovered amid their effort to design a drug to shut down a protein called TXNIP. Read more