Novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disease, accounting for over 200 million people affected worldwide. It is characterized by a lack of insulin secretion and/or increased cellular resistance to insulin, resulting in hyperglycemia and other metabolic disturbances. People with diabetes suffer from increased morbidity and premature mortality related to cardiovascular, microvascular and neuropathic complications. The Diabetes Control and Complication Trial (DCCT) has convincingly demonstrated the relationship of hyperglycemia to the development and progression of complications and showed that improved glycemic control reduced these complications. Although the DCCT exclusively studied patients with Type 1 diabetes, there is ample evidence to support the belief that the same relationship between metabolic control and clinical outcome exists in patients with Type 2 diabetes. Therefore, a major effort should be made to develop and implement more effective treatment regimes. This article reviews those novel drugs that have been recently introduced for the management of Type 2 diabetes, or that have reached an advanced level of study and will soon be proposed for preliminary clinical trials. They include: (i) compounds that promote the synthesis/secretion of insulin by the beta-cell; (ii) inhibitors of the alpha-glucosidase activity of the small intestine; (iii) substances that enhance the action of insulin at the level of the target tissues; and (iv) inhibitors of free fatty acid oxidation.