Health Australia to subsidise under PBS beginning Sept 1 Exanatide, new drug for type 2 diabetics

Relief is on the way for type 2 diabetics in Australia whose blood sugar test strip subsidy would be removed beginning 2017. A new medicine would not only be subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), but it would also mean less frequent injections.

Health Minister Susan Ley announced on Sunday that PBS would start to subsidise beginning Sept 1 Exanatide. Instead of twice daily injections, the diabetes medication would be injected only once a week and provide about 20,000 type 2 Australian diabetics savings of around $1,600 a year.

Another benefit is that the new drug would avoid long-term complications such as foot amputations, Ley says. In 2015, there were 4,000 limb amputations across Australia, News.com.au reports, citing data from Diabetes Australia.

The US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of exenatide injection on April 25, 2005 as an adjunctive therapy to improve glycemic control in type 2 diabetics who could not control their sugar levels using metformin or sulfonylurea. The medication, sold in the US under brand name Byetta, is manufactured by Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly. It became available to pharmacies in the US beginning June 1, 2005, in 5- and 10-ug per dose prefilled pen-injector device, according to Medscape.

However, exenatide is injected twice daily, while Exanatide, or Bydurion, is only injected once a week. Exanatide is a glucogen-like peptide (GLP-1) produced naturally in a non-diabetic body after eating. The new drug works by mimicking the GLP-1 mechanism, reports Defeat Diabetes.

Besides the new drug, other diabetes medication covered by the PBS are linaglipton (Trajenta), linagliptin with metformin (Trajentamet), vildagliptin (Galvus) and vildagliptin with metformin (Galvumet).

VIDEO: Overview of Bydureon a Prescription Medication that is Used to Treat Type 2 Diabetes

Source: RXWikiTV