Diamyd® prevents insulin treatment in LADA patients

Diamyd Medical announces today that Diamyd® vaccination, still after five years, significantly lowers the risk that LADA patients (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adult) need insulin treatment. No treatment related serious adverse events were seen in the study, further strengthening the safety profile of Diamyd®.

The study results will be presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting in Rome, September 7-10 by the Principal Investigator for the study, Professor Carl-David Agardh, University Hospital Malmö, Sweden, with colleagues.

“We saw a steep improvement in beta cell function already at six months after vaccination in patients treated with 20 μg of Diamyd®”, says Professor Agardh. “This improvement was largely maintained over the five years of the study.”

About 10 percent of all diabetes patients have LADA. This patient group normally requires insulin treatment within a few years after diagnosis.

“This is the first time that it is shown in man, that an autoimmune disease can be neutralized long term by the same autoantigen that drives the disease”, says Professor Åke Lernmark, University of Lund, co-investigator in the study.

“The fact that the Diamyd® vaccine shows significant positive long term effect in LADA patients is a first step towards prevention of autoimmune diabetes”, says Elisabeth Lindner, President and CEO of Diamyd Medical. “We have now fully positioned our vaccine into two separate products; one for type1diabetes and a separate product for LADA. This is a large step towards building a pharmaceutical company within diabetes”.