Common drugs could fight obesity and diabetes, say scientists

A group of commonly used medicines could be used to treat people with diabetes.

Treatments for stomach ulcers and heart rhythm disorders are included in the medicines that will be presented at the International Congress on Obesity this weekend.

"New treatments with high activity and specificity are needed to tackle a pandemic of chronic illness associated with type 2 diabetes and obese people," said Professor Murray Cairns.

Our technology identifies and targets new treatments for complex disorders.

baclofen, a muscle relaxant, and carfilzomib, a medicine used in the treatment of cancer, are some of the drugs that could be used to treat morbidly obese people. The researcher identified palbociclib, which is used to treat breast cancer, and cardiac glycosides, which are used to treat heart failure and heart rhythm disorders.

They found drugs that could be used to treat both diabetes and obese people. The cancer drug regorafenib is used to treat cancer.

It's becoming more and more attractive to recycle existing drugs in order to tackle new conditions. The need for less time and cost to bring these medicines to market is due to the fact that they have already been studied.

Older drugs may no longer be subject to patent restrictions and should be cheaper.

They were able to find drugs that could be used to treat the two conditions.

There are new uses for old drugs.

Reay said they wanted to make an impact against these and other complex conditions through the discovery of drugs that target each individual's genes.

The development of new treatments for diabetes is encouraging because the number of cases has been rising steadily across the world in the past few decades and has been linked to increases in rates of Obesity and lack of Exercise.

Reay said that Diabetes and Obesity are the major risk factors for dozens of chronic health disorders.

Two-thirds of adults in the UK are above a healthy weight and half of them are obese, which is associated with reduced life expectancy and increased rates of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer.