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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For people with type 2 diabetes whose blood sugar is inadequately controlled when they're on two oral anti-diabetes medicines, the addition of an injected drug called exenatide is helpful, researchers report.

Dr. Alain D. Baron told Reuters Health that exenatide is the first in a new class of diabetes drugs and "is now approved for marketing under the name Byetta."

Byetta has been shown "to improve glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes who exhibit a wide range of disease severity and (fail) to achieve adequate control on one or two of the most commonly used antidiabetic medications," he noted.

Baron, of Amylin Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, and colleagues conducted a study involving 733 patients. Two-thirds of the group injected 5 or 10 micrograms of exenatide twice daily, while one-third got placebo injections. All patients continued on their oral medication.

After 30 weeks, blood glucose levels were reduced on both doses of Byetta compared to levels seen in the patients who did not get the drug, the researcher report in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

Mild or moderate nausea was the most common side effect.

The drug "works through a set of unique modes of action, with restoration of first phase insulin secretion as the most characteristic," Baron explained.

Byetta "thus represents a significant additional therapeutic tool to treat type 2 diabetes, an increasingly prevalent and difficult disease to get under control," he concluded.

Diabetes Care, May 2005.