Drug May Reduce Diabetes Amputations

An older cholesterol drug may help to reduce amputations for people with diabetes, researchers say. They focused on fenofibrate. This drug lowers high cholesterol. But today most people with this problem take statin drugs instead. Researchers used data from a 2005 study. It included 10,000 older adults with type 2 diabetes. People who took fenofibrate had a 36% lower risk of a first amputation below the ankle than those who got fake pills. This means that the fenofibrate group had 64 amputations for every 100 in the other group. The rate of amputations above the ankle was the same for the two groups. The journal Lancet published the new study. The Associated Press wrote about it May 22.