Insulin therapy in type 2 diabetes patients failing oral agents: cost-effectiveness of biphasic insulin aspart 70/30 vs. insulin glargine in the US

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Insulin Glargine and Insulin Aspart, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 2 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Baseline patient characteristics and treatment effect data from the recent 'INITIATE' clinical trial served as input to a peer-reviewed, validated Markov/Monte-Carlo simulation model.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Insulin Glargine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

The methods mention a period of 35 years.

Effects on life expectancy (LE), quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE), cumulative incidence of diabetes-related complications and direct medical costs (2004 USD) were projected over 35 years.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biphasic Insulins, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Diabetes Complications, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Epidemiologic Methods, Glycated Hemoglobin and Health Care Costs.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Insulin Glargine and Insulin Aspart in 2 patients over 35 years.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2007 (Diabetes, obesity & metabolism), a journal based in England.

More context: the Insulin Glargine compound page and the Insulin Aspart compound page.