Incretin-based drugs and the risk of congestive heart failure

To determine whether the use of incretin-based drugs, including GLP-1 analogs and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, is associated with an increased risk of congestive heart failure (CHF) among patients with type 2 diabetes.

The U.K. Clinical Practice Research Datalink, linked to the Hospital Episode Statistics database, was used to conduct a cohort study with a nested case-control analysis among patients newly prescribed antidiabetic drugs between 1 January 2007 and 31 March 2012 and no prior history of CHF. Case subjects were defined as patients hospitalized for a first CHF and matched with up to 20 control subjects on age, duration of treated diabetes, calendar year, and time since cohort entry. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) with corresponding 95% CIs of incident CHF comparing current use of incretin-based drugs with current use of two or more oral antidiabetic drugs.

The cohort consisted of 57,737 patients followed for a mean 2.4 years, during which time 1,118 incident cases of hospitalized CHF were identified (incidence rate 8.1/1,000 person-years). Current use of incretin-based drugs was not associated with an increased risk of CHF (adjusted OR 0.85 [95% CI 0.62-1.16]). Secondary analyses revealed no duration-response relationship (P trend = 0.39).

In our population-based study, incretin-based drug use was not associated with an increased risk of CHF among patients with type 2 diabetes. These findings provide some reassurance, but will need to be replicated in other large-scale studies.