Focus: Diabetes Treatment

Diabetes is a growing global epidemic. An estimated 387 million people in the world have diabetes, and the numbers are rising at an alarming speed. Managing this disease requires individually tailored patient plans involving improved lifestyle, diabetes education, balancing nutrition with physical activity and often medication. Even with the disease management tools available today, about 50 percent of people don't have their blood sugar at doctor-recommended levels.

The central defect of diabetes is high levels of blood glucose. Blood glucose levels are the result of orchestrated actions by a number of hormones including insulin, incretins and glucagon among others, and organs including the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and muscle and fat tissue. For years, research and treatments have targeted primarily the pancreas, which produces the insulin needed to balance glucose levels in the blood. Janssen focuses on truly transformational therapies within the diabetes space and as the kidneys emerged as a potential target in the treatment of type 2 diabetes because of their role in filtering blood glucose Janssen followed the science and built an aggressive development plan. As such, Janssen launched the first SGLT2 inhibitor in the United States and it has been approved in over 60 countries around the world. However, with the burden of disease so high, we are not content with just this addition to the diabetes treatment paradigm. We continue to pursue novel mechanisms and treatments that will ultimately eliminate the disease.

Janssen is proud to be part of the long Johnson & Johnson legacy in diabetes. You can view our full list of products, including our latest diabetes medicines, here.  We aim to stimulate the advancement of knowledge about the disease and develop new treatment approaches to potentially prevent the progression of the disease or cure it. We work across our Johnson & Johnson companies to bring advances within diabetes research and across our research platforms focused on disease prevention, disease interception, and the microbiome.