The blood pressure-lowering drug verapamil may delay the progression of type 1 diabetes, lower insulin requirements and reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines for at least two years, a small yet promising study shows.

Given the lack of oral therapeutics available for type 1 diabetes (T1DM), researchers say the antihypertensive could potentially reduce patients’ reliance on exogenous insulin.

“Off-label use of once-daily, oral, slow-release verapamil provides an additional approach that can be considered at a one-by-one basis … in subjects who don’t have any specific contraindications,” said study author Dr Anath Shalev, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, US.

However, verapamil’s benefits were lost when the drug was discontinued, Dr Shalev and colleagues reported in Nature Communications.