A Pilot Study to Determine the Effects of Short-term Thiazolidinedione Treatment on Vascular Risk Markers in Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Diabetes is a common disease in the United States, affecting over 10 million Americans. Vascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, affects many diabetic patients and will cause the death of three-fourths of these patients. Because the majority of diabetic patients will suffer complications or death from vascular disease, we will explore treatments that have the potential to reduce or prevent vascular disease in type 2 diabetes patients. Our study will examine the effects of two diabetes medications, rosiglitazone (ROSI) and pioglitazone (PIO), on markers of vascular disease in 20 subjects with type 2 diabetes. It is thought that these two medications will reduce the risk of vascular disease by affecting the platelets and proteins that that regulate the processes involved in clot formation. One-half of the subjects enrolled in our study will take ROSI and the other half will take PIO. We will measure the clumping ability of these subjects' platelets before, during, and after three months of treatment with ROSI or PIO. We will measure the blood concentrations of several proteins (fibrinogen, PAI-1, CRP, adiponectin, and leptin) before and after treatment with the study drugs. These experiments will give us information about any beneficial effects of ROSI and PIO on the clot-forming ability in diabetes patients. We expect that treatment with ROSI and PIO will result in improvement of the disturbed clot-forming processes that predispose diabetic patients to vascular disease.