Drugs commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis may be beneficial in treating a third condition—diabetes.
A new study led by Johnson & Johnson’s Remicade and Abbott Laboratories have found that patients treated with Remicade, Humira or Amgen’s Enbrel are 38 percent less likely to develop diabetes. Patients taking hydroxychloroquine—the generic drug for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis—had an even lower likelihood of 46 percent.
According to Daniel Solomon, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the drugs’ effect may be due to the suppressing of the immune system or the slowing of the body’s metabolism of insulin that they create.
Researchers involved in the study say they hope the information may help to prevent and control diabetes.
During the study, the team looked at the health-care records of 13.906 people with either rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis while looking for new diagnoses of diabetes. While the research is not yet complete—it must be confirmed in studies that set the therapies against each other, Solomon said—the results are encouraging.
And the benefits seem to be a two-way street.
Bloomberg reports that if the results continue to hold in subsequent studies, doctors could be able to use a patient’s diabetes risk to tailor treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.
The Johnson & Johnson team is now working on a study of hydroxychloroquine in arthritis patients in order to evaluate the drug’s effect on blood sugar and insulin.
