Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Our aim is to evaluate the effect of exenatide treatment on body weight, HbA1c and compliance to treatment.

Material and method: A total of 36 (five M and 31 F) type 2 diabetic patients who were prescribed exenatide were evaluated for this study. Body weight, BMI, HbA1c parameters and side effects were noted from the outpatient clinic records.

Result: The median age of our patients was 52 years of old (19–79 years). Median duration of diabetes was 9 years. Median duration of exenatide therapy was 9 months (1–23 months). While mean HbA1c value before exenatide was 8.7% (6–12.6%) and decreased to 7.5% (5.4–10.6%) with exenatide treatment. This decrement was significant (P<0.05 Table 1). Mean body weight before the treatment was 118 kg (81–197 kg). After treatment mean body weight decreased to 109 kg (72–175 kg) significantly (P<0.05 Table 1). Adverse events were observed in 25% of our patients (n=9). Acute pancreatitis was not seen in any of our patients. Treatment was discontinued in 33% of patients (n=12). The reasons of discontiuation were drug side effects in 42% (n=5), drug inefficacy in 16% (n=2) and remaining 42% (n=5) of the patients discontinued treatment without informing their physicians. However, two of those five patients had lost weight between 2–6 kg in first 2 months of their treatment.

Conclusion: Exenatide treatment resulted in decrease in HbA1c and significant weight loss in our patients. Rate of side effects mainly nausea and vomiting was similar to the previous reports. But, it was observed that compliance to treatment was a little bit lower compared to good metabolic control of the treatment. To improve the compliance the health insurance policies should be reevaluated. As a suggestion for practitioners, those patients prescribed exenatide should be followed-up closely.