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Abstract

Diabetes is a rapid gaining status of potential epidemic in India with more than 62 million diabetic individuals currently diagnosed with the disease. Drug utilization studies are important for the optimization of drug therapy and have received a great attention in recent years. The study of drug utilization or prescribing patterns is a component of medical audit, which seeks monitoring, evaluation and necessary modifications in the prescribing practices to achieve rational and cost effective pharmacotherapy. These studies serves as a tool of investigation for clinical pharmacology and as source of suggestive information for epidemiology. The present study aimed to evaluate the drug utilization pattern of standard antidiabetic drugs in a medicine outpatient clinic of a tertiary care teaching hospital. It's a retrospective observational epidemiological study undertaken for a period of 8 months in outpatient unit of a tertiary care Hospital, Erode. The study enrolled 175 patient prescriptions. A total of 175 patients had co-morbid conditions along with diabetes. Commonly seen co-morbid condition in the study was hypertension. The study has shown metformin as the predominantly prescribed oral antidiabetic drug both as monotherapy as well as combination therapy. Overall, monotherapy was found to be predominant over combination therapy. There was no significant increase in the prescribing of newer oral antidiabetic agents like GLP-1receptor inhibitors and DPP-4 inhibitors. Glimepride + Metformin combination was the most commonly prescribed combination. This study revealed that the pattern of antidiabetic prescription was largely comply with NICE guidelines.