Treatment with the diabetes drug exenatide was associated with a significant decrease in hyperglycemia in acute stroke patients, a new study shows.
The research could offer clinicians an alternative to insulin therapy to treat hyperglycemia and reduce glucose levels, which are elevated in up to 60% of stroke patients and associated with worse outcomes after stroke.
"Use of these diabetes drugs to control glucose in acute stroke has enormous potential," said lead researcher Christopher Bladin, PhD, professor of neurology at Monash University and Eastern Health Clinical School, Australia.
The findings were presented May 6 at the European Stroke Organisation Conference (ESOC) 2022 annual meeting in Lyon, France.
A Better Fix Than Insulin?
Hyperglycemia is common in stroke patients, including those who have no prior history of diabetes. Among stroke patients with normal blood glucose upon admission, about 30% will develop hyperglycemia within 48 hours of stroke onset.
Previous research suggests that hyperglycemia is a poor prognostic factor in patients with stroke and may reduce the efficacy of reperfusion therapies such as thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomy.
"We've been looking for different ways of treating hyperglycemia for quite some time and one of the obvious ways is to use insulintherapy," Bladin said. "But as we've seen from multiple studies, insulin therapy is difficult."
