New data on patient treatment satisfaction from the LEAD 6 trial presented at the 20th World Diabetes Congress (International Diabetes Federation) shows that patients have higher overall treatment satisfaction with liraglutide than they do with exenatide.

Specifically, among the 379 patients who completed the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaires (DTSQ) during the LEAD 6 trial, those taking liraglutide perceived less hypoglycaemia (abnormally low blood sugar levels) or hyperglycaemia (abnormally high blood sugar levels) compared to those on exenatide.

“Liraglutide has shown here in a convincing study that it is associated with less nausea, less perceived hypoglycaemia and definitely higher patient satisfaction compared to exenatide,” said Dr Wolfgang Schmidt, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at St Josef-Hospital and one of the principal investigators in the trial.

“Patient-reported outcomes data is an important extension of the efficacy data. If a patient is satisfied with his or her treatment, then they are much more likely to really stick to the treatment over the long term, which is necessary in type-2 diabetes,” Dr Schmidt noted.

Treatment satisfaction was also evaluated during an open-label extension of the LEAD™ 6 trial, in which patients were either switched from exenatide to liraglutide or continued on liraglutide for another 14 weeks. These results show that switching patients from exenatide to liraglutide further improves patient satisfaction, as evidenced by the larger rise in DTSQs scores for switched patients compared to those who continued on liraglutide from weeks 26–40.
Other key liraglutide data at IDF Congress

Two separate meta-analyses of all six LEAD (Liraglutide Effect and Action in Diabetes) trials were also presented at the congress. Meta-analyses are a type of statistical analysis that summarise the results for a given treatment from several different studies in order to evaluate its overall effect on a specific outcome.

Victoza is a human glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.