Effects of 6-month treatment with the glucagon like peptide-1 analogue liraglutide on arterial stiffness, left ventricular myocardial deformation and oxidative stress in subjects with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Liraglutide in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Incretin-based therapies are used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity.

The researchers investigated the changes in arterial stiffness and left ventricular (LV) myocardial deformation after 6-month treatment with the GLP-1 analogue liraglutide in subjects with newly diagnosed T2DM.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

The researchers randomized 60 patients with newly diagnosed and treatment-naive T2DM to receive either liraglutide (n = 30) or metformin (n = 30) for 6 months.

The researchers measured at baseline and after 6-month treatment: (a) carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) (b) LV longitudinal strain (GLS), and strain rate (GLSR), peak twisting (pTw), peak twisting velocity (pTwVel) and peak untwisting velocity (pUtwVel) using speckle tracking echocardiography.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

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

The timeline in the abstract includes 6 months.

LV untwisting was calculated as the percentage difference between peak twisting and untwisting at MVO (%dpTw-UtwMVO), at peak (%dpTw-UtwPEF) and end of early LV diastolic filling (%dpTw-UtwEDF) (c) Flow mediated dilatation (FMD) of the brachial artery and percentage difference of FMD (FMD%) (d) malondialdehyde (MDA), protein carbonyls (PCs) and NT-proBNP.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Biomarkers, Biomechanical Phenomena, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Diabetic Angiopathies, Diabetic Cardiomyopathies, Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor and Greece.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Arterial stiffness, Augmentation index, Glp-1 analogue, Left ventricular function, Liraglutide and Metformin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Liraglutide over 6 months.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2018 (Cardiovascular diabetology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Liraglutide compound page.