How Does the Diabetes Drug, Pioglitazone, Reduce Protein Loss in the Urine?
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2010-03-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Pioglitazone is an insulin sensitising drug used in the treatment of patients with type 2
diabetes. In addition to its blood sugar lowering effect, pioglitazone also has a number of
other beneficial effects, one of which is to reduce the loss of protein in the urine. The
mechanism of this protein "sparing effect" of pioglitazone is not fully understood. The
proposed study will investigate whether pioglitazone has beneficial effects on the filtration
characteristics of filters in the kidney that are responsible for retaining protein in the
body. The effect of pioglitazone on the size of the pores in the filters and also the
electrostatic charge barriers that surround these pores will be investigated. The clinical
study will involve 12 patients with type 2 diabetes with minimal urine protein loss, taking
low dose pioglitazone for 3 months. Blood and urine samples will be collected at the
beginning, mid point and end of the study and used to measure the concentration of specific
proteins of different size and electrostatic charge. This data will be used to identify and
characterise changes in the filtration properties of the kidney filters during the study.