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This patient had significant insulin resistance, taking about 125 units of insulin daily (approximately 1 unit per kilogram). He had had limited instruction on how to manage his dia-betes. He had peripheral neuropathy, proteinuria, low HDL cholesterol levels, and hypertension. The patient underwent multifactorial intervention targeting his weight, glucose levels, and blood pressure. He was advised to stop smoking. He attended structured diabetes classes and received indi-vidualized instruction from a diabetes educator and a dieti-tian. Metformin therapy was reinitiated and his insulin doses were reduced. The patient was then given the GLP1 receptor agonist, exenatide. The patient lost about 8 kg in weight over the next 3 years and was able to stop his insulin. He had excellent control with an HbA1c of 6.5 % on a combination of metformin, exenatide, and glimepiride. His antihyperten-sive therapy was optimized and his urine albumin excretion declined to 1569 mg/g creatinine. This case illustrates the importance of weight loss in controlling glucose levels in the obese patient with type 2 diabetes. It also shows that simply increasing the insulin dose is not always effective. Combin-ing metformin with other oral agents and non-insulin inject-ables may be a better option.
Daniel D. Bikle, MD, PhD