Two New Drug Classes Tied to Better Survival in Type 2 Diabetes
04/20/2018
Patients with type 2 diabetes who did not achieve adequate glycemic control with metformin had improved survival during follow-up if they received add-on therapy with a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor or a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonist rather than a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor or control (placebo or no treatment), in a network meta-analysis that indirectly compared these three drug classes, according to a report in Medscape.
Rates of heart failure and myocardial infarction (MI) were also lower in patients who received SGLT-2 inhibitors rather than controls.
But GLP-1 agonists were associated with a higher rate of (largely gastrointestinal) adverse events leading to withdrawal from the trials.