Pharmaceutical companies are now looking to test their upcoming blockbuster drugs in Asia. According to drug industry experts, this will shorten the time it takes for new pharmaceutical drugs to be available for sale in the U.S. market.

Because of dramatically lower costs in Asia, and because there are much larger populations there, drug manufacturers can speed up the whole drug-approval process. A report by AT Kearney, a management consulting firm, suggests that clinical trials in China can cost half of what a trial would cost in the United States.

According to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in Boston, the number of pharmaceutical companies that conduct clinical trials overseas increased to almost 1,800 last year, up from 956 in 1997.

Also, 86% of clinical trials were done in U.S. in 1997; that figure has now dropped to 57%… and 30% of total clinical trials are now performed in countries other than Europe and the U.S.

Additionally, the FDA is looking to increase the number of drugs it approves. Among potential blockbuster drugs to receive approval next year is the diabetes drug Galvus, manufactured by Novartis.

However, despite the potential savings, many industry experts worry that these new cost-saving measures could put U.S. consumers at increased health risks.

“There is concern among physicians over whether the clinical data gathered overseas can be generalized to patients in the U.S.” says Ken Getz, a research fellow at the Tufts Center for Drug Development.

“There will be greater discussion about whether a guideline should be created that restricts the proportion of patients abroad tested for drugs that will be introduced on the U.S. market.”

The United Nations estimates the number of people globally affected by diabetes to be 246 million… and approximately half of those are in India, China, Nepal and other Asian countries.

Globally, Diabetes is ranked as the fourth leading cause of death, in terms of disease. Each year, an estimated 3.8 million people die from diabetes-related causes, such as:

• cardiovascular disease (heart disease),
• stroke (atherosclerosis),
• diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease),
• diabetic neuropathy (nerve disease),
• diabetic eye disease (retinopathy and macular oedema),
• among many others.

The Nepal Diabetes Association (NDA) reports that among people aged 20 years and older living in urban areas, 15% are affected by this disease. Among people aged 40 years and older in urban areas, this number climbed to 19%.

One of the major causes of diabetes cited among the urban people was lack of needed physical activity.

However, the NDA also discovered that diabetes is a far less serious health problem in rural areas, where only 2% of the people aged 20 years and older were reportedly affected by diabetes.

Research published in the medical journal Lancet reveals that life-threatening diabetes is becoming an epidemic not only in North America, but in Asia as well. And it appears to be only getting worse.

According to doctors at the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul, 194 million Asians were diabetic in 2003, a statistic that could soar to 330 million by the year 2025.

The Lancet research suggests Asians are developing diabetes at a younger age and at lower weight; they suffer longer with complications; and the also die earlier than people in developed countries. This onset of adult diabetes in increasingly younger populations will negatively affect Asian countries economically, as a result of higher health costs and mortality rates.

And while nearly one million people die from diabetes-related heart disease and stroke each year worldwide, another study in the Lancet also reveals that pre-diabetic conditions can be equally deadly. A Harvard School of Public Health team has found that elevated blood sugar below the diabetes threshold kills more than two times as many people every year as diabetes does — specifically, 2.2 million people, with 84% of these living in developing countries.

“Of these 2.2 million, many of them are not called diabetics,” says researcher Majid Ezzati, who led the Harvard study. “They are people who could have benefited from lowering their blood glucose, but they are not at the threshold that we call disease.”

When the total annual deaths from high blood sugar, including diabetes, are tallied together, the sum is over three million. Ezzati puts this number into perspective, by comparing it to the nearly five million deaths each year related to smoking, and the four million due to high blood cholesterol.

According to the IDF’s 2003 statistics, the top 5 countries with the largest number of diabetics were:

1. India - 35.5 million
2. China - 23.8 million
3. USA - 16.0 million
4. Russia - 9.7 million
5. Japan - 6.7 million

Doctors and medical professionals who work with Asians are becoming alarmed by the dramatic rise in diabetes cases in that demographic group.

The World Health Organization and the International Diabetes Federation predict that the number of diabetics in Asia could increase to 160 million by the year 2025.

This rise in diabetes among Asians has prompted the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, working with the Harvard Medical School, begun an initiative called the Asian Diabetes Initiative. Through this, they hope to improve awareness and management of diabetes among Asian Americans.