The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a once-a-day pill for treating type 2 diabetes from Ridgefield-based Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, the companies said Tuesday.
The approval is for Jentadueto XR tablets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in adults. It’s the seventh new treatment from the Boehringer Ingelheim-Lilly Diabetes alliance to be approved by the FDA in the last five years, according to a news release.
Jentadueto XR includes two medicines in one tablet: linagliptin and metformin. One works by increasing hormones that stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin and the liver to produce less glucose; the other lowers glucose production by the liver and its absorption in the intestine.
“Adults with type 2 diabetes are often required to take more than one medication to manage their condition, including some that have to be taken multiple times a day,” Paul Fonteyne, president and CEO of Boehringer Ingelheim, said in the release. “Jentadueto XR, the first extended-release therapy to emerge from our alliance with Lilly, offers adults with type 2 diabetes the convenience of a combination pill taken once a day to help lower blood sugar levels.”
Approximately 29 million Americans and an estimated 415 million people worldwide have diabetes, and nearly 28 percent of Americans with diabetes are undiagnosed.
In the U.S., approximately 12 percent of those aged 20 and older have diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type, accounting for an estimated 90 to 95 percent of all diagnosed adult diabetes cases in the U.S. Diabetes is a chronic condition that occurs when the body either does not properly produce, or use, the hormone insulin, the release said.
