Sanofi-Aventis the drug company that is based in Paris and that produces the weight loss drug called Acomplia has released the results of new research that it done in regard to the drug and diabetes. According to the results, the use of Acomplia can not only help you lose weight but is also effective for people who are have Type 2 diabetes and who need to improve their blood sugar levels. The trial that was financed by Sanofi Aventis was designed not be an obesity trial but to focus purely on the effect that Acomplia has on diabetes. This is very important for Sanofi Aventis because if they can prove that as well as a weight loss drug the Acomplia drug works for diabetes they will be far more likely to persuade insurance companies to pay for it on health insurance plans than if it is considered just to be for weight loss.

Some market analysts reckon that the Acomplia drug could produce as much as 3 billion dollars a year in revenue and this figure will partly depend on acceptance from insurance companies of its positive effect on blood sugar levels in diabetics.

This recent study called the Serenade trial that took place over 24 week period involved 278 volunteers who had type 2 diabetes and who were not using other diabetic medicine. The results showed that the HbA1c blood sugar levels in the volunteers who took 20 milligrams of Acomplia daily went down by 0.8% from the baseline amount of 7.9%. In the placebo group the figure was only 0.3%. It was also seen that those volunteers that had a blood sugar level of minimum 8.5% at the start of the study saw bigger reductions in blood sugar levels (almost 2%) compared to those on the placebo (0.7%).

Sanofi’s head of scientific and medical affairs noted that in a quarter of the volunteers the Acomplia drug worked as well as good diabetic treatments and that many of the participants also lost weight. Sanofi said that the results were better than they had expected.