A simple explanation of how sitagliptin, exenatide and other DDP-4 inhibitors and GLP-1 mimetics work for the treatment of Type 2 Diabetes.
Hi this is tom from zero finals comm i wanted to talk about two medications that are used in the treatment of type ii diabetes these are the dpp-4 inhibitors and the glp-1 mimetics so to start with i just want to go through a particular type of metabolic process that occurs in the body in response to food so imagine you have a burger here and that burger is eaten and
Enters into the intestines the intestines actually release something called incretins and the main incretin that i want to focus on today is something called glp-1 so in response to food farts carbohydrates proteins the intestines released glp-1 and the g-o-p ones very clever molecule it travels around the body and it sends some signals to various different organs
The first a main organ that it targets is the pancreas and in the pancreas it causes a rise in insulin and a drop in glucagon okay so what does this mean for blood sugar levels well if you have food entering into the intestines and this signal being processed to the pancreas to increase insulin and reduce glucagon before you even digested and absorbed that food you’re
Already starting to lower your blood sugar level so it means very good things in terms of keeping your blood sugar levels low now what else do incretins do well they target the stomach and they reduce gastric emptying so what does this mean it means that when you have a very large meal entering into the intestines the intestines send out this signal to the stomach
To say well hold on a minute slow down let’s process this a lot more slowly so this means you had a very steady increase in glucose rather than in blood glucose rather than a very sharp increase so this is good news for blood sugar levels as well now what else did glp ones do well they decrease appetite so they’re gonna make you want to eat less hamburgers less
Chips less foods that are going to increase your blood sugar level so all of these effects that they have mean very good things for keeping your blood sugar level nice and low now we have an enemy to dlp ones and that comes from the cell and on the cell membrane here you can see this transmembrane as’ enzyme called dpp for now tpp falls a bit of a bad guy in this
Scenario it sits on the cell membrane of almost every cell in the body and has an inhibitory effect on the glp-1 so it stops glp-1 doing all of these wonderful jobs that we want it to do dropping the blood sugar levels so as a result the blood sugar levels will rise okay so what can we do about this annoying little enzyme that stops all these good things happening
Well we can give them something called sitting lipton and there’s various other types of gliptins out on the market and i’m sure you’ll come across them but what these drugs are is dpp-4 enzyme inhibitors so they essentially block the action of the dpp-4 enzyme and allow all of these good things to happen now how else can we make use of these incretin x’ that do
All these wonderful jobs for us when we’re trying to lower blood sugar levels well we can give synthetic versions of the glp ones and they’re called glp-1 mimetics an example of one of those is exhibit id so externa tide is injected subcutaneously in the same way as insulin and you do it twice a day before meals and it has all the same effects as the glp-1 itself
So there’s a brief summary of dpp-4 inhibitors and glp-1 mimetics i hope that’s been helpful in clarifying how these medications work if you’d like more information more notes questions and a blog visit the website at zero to finals comm if you like the videos why not check out the rest of them and you can even subscribe to the youtube channel so see you again soon thanks for watching
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How does sitagliptin work? DPP-4 inhibitors and GLP-1 mimetics By Zero To Finals
