Improving Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors with the Virta Program

At Virta, two of our company’s core values are Evidence-based and Transparency. This goes for our conduct within Virta, as well as how we engage with our partners, the public, and most importantly, our patients.

With that in mind, I am excited to announce that our ongoing clinical trial’s cardiovascular health outcomes were just published in Cardiovascular Diabetology. This study is momentous because it marks the beginning of our publications on how Virta impacts health beyond type 2 diabetes reversal. Also, at a higher level, it challenges our society’s implicit acceptance that medical treatments will improve one condition at a time or even at the expense of another.

‍What does Virta do beyond type 2 diabetes reversal? Today’s publication continues to answer this question. We systematically tracked and reviewed 26 parameters associated with cardiovascular disease in our clinical trial. Nearly all (22) of these parameters showed significant improvement following 1-yr of the Virta program, while zero showed significant improvement in those receiving usual type 2 diabetes care.

Of particular note are the following:

• A reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure
• An 11.9% reduction in 10-year ASCVD (atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease) risk score
• A substantial prescription reduction for hypertension medications
• A 39% decrease in inflammation (measured by C-reactive protein)

These findings happened in concert with weight loss and type 2 diabetes reversal—60% of our patients saw type 2 diabetes reversed at 1 year. For payers, this translates into an estimated $9600 per patient over the first 2 years of treatment.

For additional analyses of these markers of cardiovascular disease risk, Virta co-founders Drs. Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek provide a scientific deep-dive in a way only they can. We have also summarized the cardiovascular benefits of the Virta program in a downloadable white paper.

‍What’s next?

‍Our team couldn’t be happier with these results. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes, and these findings give hope to 30 million Americans and their loved ones that they can safely lower their blood glucose levels and improve their cardiovascular health without expensive drugs or complex medical procedures. Yet, even with these outcomes, our research and clinical teams are more dedicated than ever to a scientific and evidence-based approach to improving the Virta program for our patients.

‍Dr. Sarah Hallberg on the one-year results of the Virta program