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Multiple drug combination of anti-diabetic agents as a predictor for poor clinical response to liraglutide
A Haraguchi1, K Fujishima, T Ando
1Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki, Japan - takaoando@gmail.com.
Aim:
Aim of the study was to retrospectively analyze the clinical parameters that contribute to the therapeutic outcome of GLP-1 analogues.
Methods:
We enrolled 106 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), treated with liraglutide (N.=69) or exenatide (N.=37) for longer than three months. The patients were divided into two groups: good responders and poor responders to GLP-1 analogues, based on pretreatment and post-treatment HbA1c levels. Good responders were those whose HbA1c level had decreased by 1% or more, or maintained at less than 7%. All other patients were categorized as poor responders. We used univariate and multivariate analyses to assess pretreatment parameters between the two groups.
Results:
Approximately 35% of the patients were poor responders. Our analysis of the pretreatment clinical parameters revealed that number of anti-diabetic agents and use of sulfonylurea were significantly associated with poor response to liraglutide (P=0.02 and P=0.03, respectively) in a multivariate analysis. We were not able to find any candidate related to clinical response to exenatide.
Conclusion:
Our study showed that the therapeutic effects of GLP-1 analogues on T2DM patients were heterogeneous. T2DM patients who require multiple anti-diabetic agents, especially sulfonylurea, do not benefit from liraglutide treatment.
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