TORONTO - Many people with diabetes in Canada will soon be able to take insulin once a week instead of daily, drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk announced on Monday. Insulin icodec, which will be sold under the brand name Awiqli, is the first once-a-week basal insulin injection in the world and it will be available across the country starting June 30, the company told The Canadian Press ahead of the announcement. Canada is the first country to get the product, which was approved by Health Canada in March for the treatment of adults with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
“I think it’s a very big deal,” said Dr. Harpreet Bajaj, head of the clinical practice guidelines steering committee at Diabetes Canada. ”(It’s) huge for reducing the burden on these people who need to inject insulin,” said Bajaj, an endocrinologist at LMC, a publicly-funded diabetes and endocrinology specialty clinic with locations across southern Ontario and in Calgary.
He said some of his patients participated in clinical trials for Awiqli and have been asking when it would become available because they’ve had to return to daily injections since the study ended. Although the weekly insulin has Health Canada’s approval for treatment of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, endocrinologists say it will be mostly useful for Type 2 patients. That’s largely because patients with Type 1 diabetes would still have to give themselves additional fast-acting insulin injections at mealtimes every day because their b.
