Exenatide Once Weekly Provided Superior Glucose Control With Weight Loss Compared to Sitagliptin or Pioglitazone in Head-to-Head DURATI...( SAN DIEGO INDIANAPOLIS and CAMBRIDGE ...),Health

SAN DIEGO, INDIANAPOLIS and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMLN), Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and Alkermes, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALKS) today announced positive results from DURATION-2, the second in a series of studies designed to test the superiority of exenatide once weekly, an investigational diabetes therapy, as compared to other diabetes medications.

This 26-week clinical study compared exenatide once weekly to maximum doses of sitagliptin or pioglitazone, two commonly prescribed oral diabetes medications, in 491 patients with type 2 diabetes taking stable doses of metformin. After completing 26 weeks of treatment, evaluable patients randomized to exenatide once weekly experienced a statistically significant reduction in A1C, a measure of average blood sugar over three months, of 1.7 percentage points from baseline, compared to a reduction of 1.0 percentage point for sitagliptin and 1.4 percentage points for pioglitazone. This finding represents a statistically significant benefit of exenatide once weekly over both sitagliptin and pioglitazone.

Treatment with exenatide once weekly also produced statistically significant differences in weight, with weight loss of 6.2 pounds at 26 weeks, compared with a loss of 1.9 pounds for sitagliptin, and a weight gain of 7.4 pounds for pioglitazone.

"Recognizing the importance of A1C control, it has become clear that health care providers need comparative data to better understand the relative value of therapeutic options," said Richard Bergenstal, M.D., executive director of the International Diabetes Center. "A once-weekly
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