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.
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