A bitter problem for patients, a sweet solution for pharmaceuticals

For Diabetes, Older Drugs Are Often the Best - NYTimes.com: "WHEN it comes to prescription drugs, newer is not necessarily better. And that’s especially true when treating diabetes.

One in 10 Americans has Type 2 diabetes. If the trend continues, one in three will suffer from the disease by the year 2050, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most Type 2 diabetes patients take one or more drugs to control blood sugar. They spent an estimated $12.5 billion on medication in 2007, twice the amount spent in 2001, according to a study by the University of Chicago. (That figure does not including drugs that diabetics are often prescribed for related health conditions, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.)

Why the increase? More diagnosed patients, more drugs per patient and an onslaught of expensive new drugs, according to Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. Since 1995, several new classes of diabetes medications have come on the market. Diabetes drugs are important to the pharmaceutical industry, more lucrative than drugs for many other chronic diseases, Dr. Alexander noted in an interview."