Weight loss, glycemic control, and changes in cardiovascular biomarkers in patients with type 2 diabetes receiving incretin therapies or insulin in a large cohort database.

Description

This retrospective study was performed to evaluate the beneficial effects of incretin-based therapies such as glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) receptor agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors on body weight, glycemic control and cardiovascular risk biomarkers in the real life setting of patients with type 2 diabetes. After analyzing medical records from the General Electric Centricity research database, a total of 6,280, 5,861 and 32,398 patients receiving exenatide, sitagliptin, or insulin, respectively, were included in the study. Patients initiating a GLP-1 receptor agonist and a DPP-4 inhibitor had significant weight loss and patients initiating insulin had significant weight gain. A significant additive glucose-lowering effect was associated with weight loss in patients treated with exenatide. There was a significant association between weight loss and a reduction in blood pressure for all therapies. Moreover, weight loss was associated with a reduction in triglycerides, LDL cholesterol as well as total cholesterol in patients on the GLP-1 receptor agonist and with a reduction in triglycerides and total cholesterol among patients on the DPP-4 inhibitor. Thus, these results suggest that weight reduction with GLP-1 receptor agonist provides greater improvement in cardiovascular biomarkers than the other therapies studied.