THURSDAY, Sept. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) — For individuals with type 2 diabetes, sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are associated with a reduced risk for cardiovascular events during short-term follow-up, according to a study published online Sept. 23 in The BMJ.
Kristian B. Filion, Ph.D., from the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, and colleagues conducted a multi-database retrospective cohort study involving 209,867 new users of an SGLT2 inhibitor matched to 209,867 users of a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor on time conditional propensity score. Participants were followed for a mean of 0.9 years for a primary outcome of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE).
The researchers found that SGLT2 inhibitors were associated with reduced risks for MACE compared with DPP-4 inhibitors (incidence rate per 1,000 person-years, 11.4 versus 16.5; hazard ratio, 0.76). In addition, SGLT2 inhibitors were associated with reductions in the rates of myocardial infarction, cardiovascular death, heart failure, and all-cause mortality (hazard ratios, 0.82, 0.60, 0.43, and 0.60, respectively). For ischemic stroke, the benefit of SGLT2 inhibitors was not statistically significant. For MACE, similar benefits were seen for canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, and empagliflozin (hazard ratios, 0.79, 0.73, 0.77, respectively).
“These findings suggest that SGLT2 inhibitors offer cardioprotective benefits among people with type 2 diabetes in a real world setting, although additional studies are needed to determine if these benefits persist long term,” the authors write.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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