Lower rates of hypoglycaemia in older individuals with type 2 diabetes using insulin degludec versus insulin glargine U100: Results from SWITCH 2

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Insulin Glargine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

This study aimed to investigate the safety of insulin degludec (degludec) in relation to age and risk of hypoglycaemia post hoc in individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) (SWITCH 2 trial).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

After 32 weeks, patients crossed over to the other treatment.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and crossover study.

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

As a double-blind Insulin Glargine study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Insulin Glargine and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

The timeline in the abstract includes 32 weeks.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Hypoglycemia, Hypoglycemic Agents, Insulin Glargine and Insulin, Long-Acting.

The authors tagged it with the keywords basal insulin, diabetes treatment, elderly, hypoglycaemia and type 2 diabetes.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and crossover study of Insulin Glargine over 32 weeks.

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 2019 (Diabetes, obesity & metabolism), a journal based in England.

More context: the Insulin Glargine compound page.