Japanese Clinical Medicine

We attempted to examine whether withdrawal from insulin therapy is or is not possible with administration of additional alogliptin and identify the contributing factors. The subjects were 43 adult patients with type 2 diabetes undergoing insulin therapy after admission. After glucotoxicity was removed, 25 mg alogliptin was additionally administered. Insulin was reduced by 15.6 ± 13.0 units (mean ± SD), and 17 patients (39.5%) completely withdrew from insulin therapy. Several factors were compared between the two groups of patients: those who could withdraw from insulin therapy and those who could not. The former group showed lower HbA1c levels on admission, a lower insulin dose before adding alogliptin, lower injection frequencies, and longer treatment histories prior to admission. Logistic regression analysis showed that lower insulin dose contributed significantly to withdrawal. These results suggest that a lower insulin dose is the best predictor for withdrawal from insulin therapy after adding alogliptin.