Skip to main content
Top

09-20-2022 | EASD 2022 | Conference coverage | News

Freestyle Libre cuts acute complication risk in insulin-treated type 2 diabetes

Author: Eleanor McDermid

print
PRINT
insite
SEARCH

medwireNews: People taking basal insulin to treat type 2 diabetes experience a significant reduction in the risk for acute complications, which is sustained for at least 2 years after initiating use of the Freestyle Libre, say French researchers.

The analysis from the RELIEF study included 5933 people with type 2 diabetes treated with basal-only insulin who initiated intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring (isCGM) with the Freestyle Libre. These people were identified in a nationwide database between August 2017 and December 2018.

During the year prior to isCGM initiation, the rate of hospitalization for any acute complications was 2.40% and in the year after this fell significantly to 0.79%.

This was true for diabetic ketoacidosis, which fell by 75% from 1.37% to 0.34%, for severe hypoglycemia, which fell by 44% from 0.73% to 0.41%, and for the rate of comas, which fell by 71% from 0.34% to 0.10%. Hospitalizations for hyperglycemia were extremely rare in the year before initiation, at 0.07%, and there were none in the year after.

These benefits were sustained in the 1994 people who continued to use isCGM for 2 years, with all hospitalizations for acute events falling from 2.00% to 0.75% at year 1 and 0.60% at year 2.

Researcher Jean-Pierre Riveline (Lariboisière Hospital, Paris, France) told delegates at the 58th EASD Annual Meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, that the benefits at year 1 were observed regardless of whether the Libre was prescribed in primary or specialist care and regardless of how much people self-monitored their blood glucose at baseline.

“This suggests that Freestyle Libre should be more widely prescribed as part of individualized care for patients with type 2 diabetes treated with a basal-only insulin regimen,” Riveline concluded.

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2022 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group

EASD Annual Meeting; Stockholm, Sweden: Sept 19–23, 2022

print
PRINT

Novel clinical evidence in continuous glucose monitoring

Novel clinical evidence in continuous glucose monitoring

How real-world studies complement randomized controlled trials

Jean-Pierre Riveline uses data from real-life continuous glucose monitoring studies to illustrate how these can uncover critical information about clinical outcomes that are hard to assess in randomized controlled trials.

This video has been developed through unrestricted educational funding from Abbott Diabetes Care.

Watch the video