Glucagon Nasal Spray Effective for Hypoglycemia Rescue
Scott Benner
Spray device easier for untrained people to use, experts say...
- Intranasal glucagon is effective and noninferior to injectable intramuscular glucagon for the correction of insulin-induced hypoglycemia in adults with type 1 diabetes, according to a randomized, cross-over study.
- Note that hypoglycemia was induced by administering insulin in a controlled setting, but this approximates the real-world setting of severe hypoglycemia occurring due to excessive therapeutic insulin with inadequate or absent endogenous glucagon response.
- An intranasal glucagon spray was as good as injectable glucagon for treating induced hypoglycemia in patients with type 1 diabetes, according to a randomized crossover noninferiority study.
- The effect of the nasal spray lagged a few minutes behind that of injections, but it met the study's pre-defined success criteria 74 out of 75 times, compared to 75 out of 75 with injectable glucagon, reported a team of investigators led by Michael Rickels, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
- Currently, only injectable glucagon is available for treating hypoglycemic episodes, and it comes in a powder that must be reconstituted in a diluent before injection.
- The intranasal glucagon, developed by Locemia Solutions, is in phase III clinical testing. Eli Lilly recently announced that it acquired worldwide rights to Locemia's intranasal glucagon and plans to bring it to market.