Feb 15, 2023
SASKATOON – A new study provides reassuring evidence that anti-diabetic incretin-based drugs are not associated with an increased risk of heart failure. The provincial portion of the study was performed at the Health Quality Council (HQC) and Nianping Hu, a research analyst with HQC, was lead researcher for the study in Saskatchewan and one of its co-authors. In addition, HQC’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Gary Teare is the principal investigator in Saskatchewan for the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES) – the national research group that undertook this research.
Incretin-based drugs, a type of medication used to treat type 2 diabetes, do not increase the risk of being hospitalized for heart failure relative to commonly used combinations of oral anti-diabetic drugs, according to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Incretin-based drugs (which include the DPP-4 inhibitors Galvus, Jalra, Januvia, Nesina, Onglyza, Trajenta, and Xiliarx, as well as the GLP-1 analogs Bydureon, Byetta, Saxenda, Trulicity, and Victoza) are commonly prescribed to help reduce blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes. Approximately 12% of these patients are prescribed this class of drug. Concerns regarding their heart safety were raised following an unexpected finding of an increased risk of heart failure in a recent clinical trial. This finding was not replicated in subsequent clinical trials.
“Clinical trials have provided inconsistent findings regarding the risk of heart failure with these drugs,” said lead author Dr. Kristian B. Filion, an epidemiologist at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and Assistant Professor of Medicine at McGill University. “By using health records from multiple Canadian provinces, the United States, and the United Kingdom, we were able to study this potential drug safety issue in a large number of patients seen in a real world setting.”
The study was conducted by the CNODES, a pan-Canadian multi-center drug safety network that is part of the Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN) and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). CNODES used administrative electronic health records of over 1.4 million patients in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom to examine the relationship between the use of incretin-based drugs and hospitalization for heart failure.
“This landmark study highlights the importance of the CNODES pan-Canadian initiative in addressing questions of prescription drug safety. Such important research requires that we study very large numbers of patients, and this can only be achieved by participation of all Canadian provinces,” said Dr. Samy Suissa, the Principal Investigator of CNODES and Director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. “The cutting-edge methods of CNODES provide crucial information for the health of Canadian patients with diabetes who must use these medications.”
“It’s exciting that Saskatchewan research could form a portion of this seminal study on anti-diabetic incretin-based medications,” said Dr. Gary Teare, CEO of HQC, and an adjunct professor in the College of Medicine and the School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan. “As the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes among Canadians continues to increase, the importance of this kind of real-world diabetes research also increases. We look forward to further collaborations with CNODES.”
Citation: Filion KB, Azoulay L, Platt RW, Dahl M, Dormuth CR, Clemens KK, Hu N, Paterson JM, Targownik L, Turin TC, Udell JA, Ernst P for the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES) Investigators. A multicenter observational study of incretin-based drugs and heart failure. N Engl J Med 2016; 374:1145-54.
*CNODES Investigators: Samy Suissa (Principal Investigator); Colin R. Dormuth (British Columbia); Brenda R. Hemmelgarn (Alberta); Gary F. Teare (Saskatchewan); Patricia Caetano and Dan Chateau (Manitoba); David A. Henry and J. Michael Paterson (Ontario); Jacques LeLorier (Québec); Adrian R. Levy (Nova Scotia); Pierre Ernst (UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink [CPRD]); Robert W. Platt (Methods); and Ingrid S. Sketris (Knowledge Translation). For more about CNODES: http://www.cnodes.ca/
For more about the Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN): www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/40269.html
