Drug adherence, healthcare dispute, clinical costs, and heart failure charges were higher amongst patients with form 2 diabetes who were newly prescribed a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor than a glucagon-admire peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist in a right-world, observational look.
Composite cardiovascular (CV) outcomes were the same between the 2 drug lessons.
Insiya Poonawalla, PhD, a researcher at Humana Healthcare Compare, Flower Mound, Texas, reported the look outcomes in an oral presentation on June 12 at the virtual American Diabetes Association (ADA) 80th Scientific Lessons.
The investigators matched extra than 10,000 patients with form 2 diabetes — half initiated on an SGLT2 inhibitor and half initiated on a GLP-1 agonist — from the Humana database of insurance claims recordsdata.
“These findings counsel attainable advantages” of SGLT2 inhibitors, “in particular the put threat linked to heart failure is a needed consideration,” Poonawalla mentioned, but as continuously, any advantages could presumably well tranquil be weighed in opposition to any dangers.
And “whereas this look presents a wonderful whole and contemporary describe of claims till 2018,” it has barriers inherent to observational recordsdata (such as that that it is seemingly you’ll also bear in mind errors or omissions in the claims recordsdata), she conceded.
Mikhail Kosiborod, MD, invited to observation on the study, mentioned this preliminary look was seemingly too instant and tiny to definitively expose variations in composite CV outcomes between the 2 drug lessons, but he famed that the general findings are no longer unexpected.
And in most cases, the actual CV threat profile of a person patient will level to at least one or the diversified of these drug lessons as a most though-provoking match, he famed.
Too Rapidly to Alter Medical Note
Kosiborod, from Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City, Missouri, mentioned he nonetheless feels “it can presumably well be goal a cramped premature to make dispute of these findings as a handbook to interchange clinical apply.”
“The look is comparatively tiny in scope and seemingly underpowered to stumble on CV outcomes,” he instructed Medscape Medical Files in an email.
Bigger population-primarily based entirely study and ideally head-to-head randomized managed trials of barely lots of form 2 diabetes agents could presumably well compare these two drug lessons extra definitively, he asserted.
For the time being, safety profiles of both remedy lessons “were effectively established — in tens of thousands of patients in clinical trials and thousands and thousands of patients prescribed these therapies in clinical apply,” he famed.
Customarily, the remedy in both lessons are effectively-tolerated and protected for most patients with form 2 diabetes when former precisely.
“No doubt, patients with form 2 diabetes and established CV disease (or at high threat for CV issues) are ideal candidates for both an SGLT2 inhibitor or a GLP-1 receptor agonist,” Kosiborod mentioned.
“Given the solutions now we dangle from final result trials, an SGLT2 inhibitor could presumably well be a higher preliminary approach in a patient with form 2 diabetes and heart failure (especially heart failure with reduced ejection fragment) and/or diabetic kidney disease,” he persisted.
On the diversified hand, “a GLP-1 receptor agonist could be a higher preliminary approach in a kind 2 diabetes patient with (or at very high threat for) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), especially if there could be concomitant weight problems contributing to the disease assignment.”
Restricted Comparisons of These Two More contemporary Drug Lessons
“Precise-world evidence comparing these two therapeutic lessons per CV outcomes is miniature,” Poonawalla mentioned in the initiating of her presentation, and relative cure persistence, utilization, and value recordsdata are even less effectively studied.
To analyze this, the researchers identified patients outdated 19 to 89 years who were newly prescribed one amongst these two kinds of antidiabetic agents in the direction of January 1, 2015 by means of June 30, 2017.
Poonawalla and senior look creator Phil Schwab, PhD, study lead, Humana Healthcare Compare, Louisville, Kentucky, clarified the look create and findings in an email to Medscape Medical Files.
The crew matched 5507 patients initiated on a GLP-1 agonist with 5507 patients newly prescribed an SGLT2 inhibitor.
Sufferers were a median age of 65 years and 53% were females.
More than a third (37%) had established ASCVD, in conjunction with myocardial infarction (MI) (7.9%) and stroke (9.8%), and 11.5% had heart failure.
About two thirds were receiving metformin and just a few third were receiving insulin.
Within the GLP-1 agonist community, extra than half of patients were prescribed liraglutide (57%), followed by dulaglutide (33%), exenatide, and lixisenatide (two patients).
Within the SGLT2 inhibitor community, halt to 70% bought canagliflozin, just a few quarter bought empagliflozin, and the relaxation bought dapagliflozin.
Throughout up to three.5 years of apply-up, a the same percentage of patients in every community had both an MI, stroke, or died (the predominant composite CV final result) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.98; 95% CI, 0.89 – 1.07).
Nonetheless, extra patients in the GLP-1 agonist community had heart failure or died (the secondary composite CV final result), driven by a higher fee of heart failure in this community.
But after adjusting for time to events there was no considerable between-community distinction in the secondary composite CV final result (HR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.99 – 1.21).
Throughout the 12-months after the preliminary prescription, patients who were started on a GLP-1 agonist versus an SGLT2 inhibitor had higher point out monthly clinical costs, which included hospitalizations, emergency department (ED) visits, and outpatient visits ($904 vs $834; P < .001).
They also had higher pharmacy costs, which covered all remedy ($891 vs $783; P < .001).
And as well they were extra seemingly to forestall cure (HR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.10 – 1.21), be hospitalized (14.4% vs 11.9%; P < .001), or focus on over with the ED (27.4% vs 23.5%; P < .001).
“No longer Too Gruesome” and “A cramped bit Reassuring”
General, Kosiborod didn’t safe the outcomes hideous.
Given the pattern dimension and apply-up time, match charges were doubtlessly barely low and insufficient to draw firm conclusions in regards to the composite CV outcomes, he reiterated.
Nonetheless, given the comparable effects of these two drug sorts on predominant negative cardiac events (MACE) in the same patient populations with form 2 diabetes, it is no longer too hideous that there were no considerable variations in these outcomes.
It was also “goal a cramped reassuring” to ask that heart failure charges were decrease with SGLT2 inhibitors, “as one would set a query to,” he mentioned, as a result of these agents “were confirmed to an excellent deal decrease the threat of hospitalization for heart failure in just a few ultimate result trials, whereas GLP-1 receptor agonists’ vital CV effects seem like extra miniature to MACE cut value.”
The upper charges of discontinuation with GLP-1 receptor agonists “shall be no longer a shock, since patients trip extra gastrointestinal tolerability components with these agents (primarily nausea),” which can presumably well moreover be mitigated in the massive majority of patients with acceptable training and shut apply up — but is no longer performed consistently.
Similarly, “the value variations are also expected, since GLP-1 receptor agonists are seemingly to be extra costly.”
On the diversified hand, the upper charges of hospitalizations with GLP-1 agonists in comparison with SGLT2 inhibitors “requires additional exploration and affirmation,” Kosiborod mentioned.
But he suspects this is able to presumably well be due to residual confounding, “since GLP-1 agonists are continuously initiated later in the kind 2 diabetes cure algorithm,” so these patients could presumably well dangle lengthier, more durable-to-arrange form 2 diabetes with extra comorbidities despite the propensity matching.
Poonawalla and Schwab are employed by Humana. Kosiborod has disclosed study give a salvage to from AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim; honoraria from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Novo Nordisk; and consulting bills from Amarin, Amgen, Applied Therapeutics, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Glytec, Intarcia, Janssen, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi Aventis .
ADA 2020 Scientific Lessons. Equipped June 12, 2020. Summary 36-OR.
For extra diabetes and endocrinology data, apply us on Twitter and Fb.
