The anti-diabetes drug Avandia not only improves the body’s response to insulin but also helps insulin-producing cells in the pancreas recover their function, a new study shows.

Specifically, when people with type 2 diabetes take the drug, so-called pancreatic beta-cells regain the ability to secrete a surge of insulin when glucose levels jump after a meal.

“This is the first study to demonstrate an improvement in the first phase of the insulin secretory response to glucose in subjects with long-standing type 2 diabetes receiving oral pharmacological therapy,” the researchers note.

Avandia, known generically as rosiglitazone, belongs to a class of drugs called thiazolidines or TZDs. The fact that these drugs apparently rejuvenate pancreatic beta cells “makes TZDs unique among diabetic therapies,” Dr. David Bell from The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine told Reuters Health.

Bell and Dr. Fernando Ovalle compared Avandia with insulin treatment in a group of subjects with of type 2 diabetes.

The initial insulin response to glucose increased significantly in the Avandia group, but not in the insulin-treated group, the duo reports in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

The team thinks the results should lead to a change in the standard approach to treating type 2 diabetes.

“Instead of being initiated after other oral agents have failed, thiazolidines should be initiated at the earliest possible time,” Bell said. “TZDs should be started when there is the maximal beta cell function - that is, when diabetes is diagnosed.”

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, November 2004.