A worldwide diabetes drug trial in which more than 100 Bermuda residents took part has shown that a drug already approved for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes may help prevent the disease from developing in high-risk individuals.

The study showed that use of the drug rosiglitazone ? which is sold commercially as Avandia ? over three years cut the risk for Type 2 diabetes by more than half.

However, a second drug that was also tested in the three-year study proved to be less successful in preventing the onset of the disease which affects an estimated 14 percent of Bermuda?s population, the Diabetes Reduction Assessment with Ramipril and Rosiglitazone Medications (DREAM) trial showed.

Sold in pharmacies as Altace, ramipril did not forestall the disease in at-risk patients, although it did have a modest effect in lowering blood sugar.

Earlier trials suggested the ACE inhibitor might help prevent Type 2 diabetes.

The Bermuda Diabetes Association co-ordinator Debbie Jones spoke to on Friday following the meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, in Copenhagen.

?Worldwide 24,000 people were screened and of those 5,592 were in the trial, but in Bermuda we screened 693 and we had 107 on the trial, which is huge for an Island our size,? she said.

?The reason they used ramipril was that it was used during The HOPE study, in which they saw that people who used it did not go on to develop (Type 2) diabetes.

?So they thought that they would test it in a trial just specifically to prevent diabetes.?

She said Rosiglitazone is a member of the litazone family which has a history of treating diabetes.

?They (litazone drugs) are already being widely used, but they had never tested them to see if they could prevent diabetes,? she said. ?What the study has shown is that ramipril is a good medication, but... you can?t use it to prevent diabetes. However, rosiglitazone has shown to have a positive effect on preventing and regressing diabetes.?

But there were some side effects to taking rosiglitazone, she said.

?There are certain problems such as some weight gain, which is not positive and people would not be happy to gain weight, so that has to be looked at very carefully,? she said.

?We know that diet and exercise works and so you really have to push that, but at the same time you have to recognise that there are a lot of people in the world that are just not going to (do that). And so there has to be an alternative that you can use for people who can?t or won?t exercise to help prevent diabetes.?

She added that even though the drug will not prevent the onset of diabetes forever, it will delay complications.

?In 70 percent of cases there was a reduction in the rate of diabetes. But the big question that we need to ask and this will be a question to be asked in the future, is should we be screening everyone who is at risk for diabetes early, to give them the option to go on medication or not? That is a question that will have to be answered after the meeting in Cape Town when the results are ready to be published.

?There are still more results to come, these are the preliminary results, but now you have to see what happens to people three months down the road and they will be released in Cape Town, in December.

?At that point they will not be on any medication and they will be re-tested to see if they maintained their blood sugars, but it will be interesting to see what happens.?

More than 1,000 people from all over the world attended the standing-room only meeting to hear the results in Copenhagen on Friday, she said.

?But it is especially exciting that Bermuda, our small little Island, was a part of this trial and that we could stand there with all the other centres around the world who do research and be very proud of our participants.

?The positive side for Bermuda is that we have never been involved in an international clinical trial. This is also putting us on the cutting edge of research and when the results come, they come right to us and we can interpret them.?