To guarantee a better quality of life, some supplements are required for some patients that improve their prognosis following changing habits.
Dr. Leticia Hernández, President-elect of the Puerto Rican Society of Endocrinology and Diabetology. Photo: Journal of Medicine and Public Health. Fabiola Plaza.
Treatments for some chronic conditions are administered individually, since it depends on how the patient is progressing with respect to the disease. When an individual is diagnosed with diabetes, the attending physician generally recommends changing some eating habits and selecting certain nutrients that allow this person to regulate glucose.
When in certain cases there is no improvement in the patient compared to some basic recommendations such as: food, supplements or medications, focused treatment is started and in this case with metformin, a drug specialized in the management of diabetes whose function is centralized in regulating the insulin that is often affected by the condition.
In an interview with the magazine Medicine and Public Health (MSP), Dr. Leticia Hernández, President-elect of the Puerto Rican Society of Endocrinology and Diabetology, explains the function of metformin, the type of administration and the benefit for patients diagnosed with type diabetes two.
“Metformin helps control one of the main defects of type 2 diabetes, which is insulin resistance, which means that it helps our tissues to better use insulin and also prevents us from releasing glucose through the liver that it is the one that makes our glucose levels rise more in the body”, explained the elected director.
administration
Thanks to preliminary studies of metformin there is a predisposition to prevent diabetes from manifesting, where those patients who have already been diagnosed or have a risk factor can create “immunity” once morest the pathology, also the amount of administration must be essential to ensure the proper functioning of the drug.
“Metformin is used from the pre-diabetes stage, since there is a study that is the prevention of diabetes, where it was found that metformin lowered the probability of developing diabetes at 10 years in patients with pre-diabetes with 31%. In patients with pre-diabetes, a dose of 150 mg twice a day is used, which is the dose provided by the studies that had this beneficial metabolic effect in preventing the development of diabetes in patients with pre-diabetes. For patients who have diabetes, they should use a dose of 1,000 mg twice a day, that is the appropriate dose, “says Dr. Hernández.
Diabetes and kidney failure
When diabetes has already advanced considerably, as explained by the doctor, metformin can cause some side effects if it is not consumed in a rationed way and in less quantity than at the beginning.
“Patients suffering from advanced renal failure have a kidney filtration ratio, less than 45 in these the metformin dose is reduced by half, since they may have a complication known as lactic acidosis related to renal failure that when the medication is used, the probability that it occurs may be greater,” he indicated.
Treatment
The drug is recommended as the first line of therapy for patients who have developed diabetes, as well as for advanced diagnoses; however, the amount administered varies according to the progress of the individual and the possible complications that are occurring during the disease.
“In most cases it is recommended as the first line of treatment, but if there is a patient with advanced kidney failure, this treatment is not normally started from the beginning and if the patient is already using it, it is eliminated and another drug is considered. so that they do not have problems”, added the doctor.
On the other hand, he indicated that this is a drug that can be used from the beginning, because it is an inexpensive drug, it does not cause weight gain and most of the research for new drugs is added to metformin and apart from that it is a fairly safe to use.
