New research presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (15-19 September) and published simultaneously in The Lancet shows that a much lower dose than previously thought of the old immunomodulatory drug anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) is safe and effective in preventing progression of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in young people.
The authors, led by EASD President Professor Chantal Mathieu, Department of Endocrinology, UZ Leuven, Belgium, say that the trial findings open up the potential use of this affordable, repurposed agent, ATG, in a low and safe dose, as a disease-modifying agent in children and adolescents with newly diagnosed clinical T1D.
T1D is a chronic disease affecting approximately 9·5 million people wo