Type 2 diabetes drug dapagliflozin lowers all-cause mortality risk, study finds

People taking the type 2 diabetes drug dapagliflozin could have an increased life expectancy, according to research.
This new analysis from the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation found that dapagliflozin lowered the all-cause mortality risk among those with type 2 diabetes.
The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD) was also lower among people prescribed the SGLT2 inhibitor, which is marketed as Forxiga, compared to standard care.
Professor Wasim Hanif and colleagues analysed information from the Health Improvement Network Database, comparing more than 22,000 adults with type 2 diabetes to assess how dapagliflozin impacted the risk of CVD.
Overall, 4,350 patients had experienced a previous CVD event (ischemic heart disease, stroke and/or heart failure), and 4,444 had been previously exposed to dapagliflozin.
“The current therapies for type 2 diabetes contribute to lowering of blood sugar but have had little impact in reducing cardiovascular events and mortality,” said Hanif.
“Recently a number of clinical trials have reported on various classes of anti-glycemic agents looking at the [cardiovascular] outcomes. One of the clinical trials was the EMPA-REG with empagliflozin (Jardiance), an SGLT2 inhibitor study that showed significant reduction of CV death by 38 per cent and all-cause mortality by 32 per cent in patients with high risk of developing CV disease.”
The risk for dying from any cause was lower among participants who had been exposed to dapagliflozin compared to others with diabetes who had undergone standard treatment.
Hanif explained: “The reduction in all-cause mortality is similar to EMPA-REG in the high-risk population for CVD exposed to dapagliflozin.
“Even in patients with low risk of CVD there was significant reduction in all-cause mortality with dapagliflozin. The EMPA-REG study did not include the low-risk patients.
“This study indicated that perhaps the CV benefits of empagliflozin in the EMPA-REG study can be seen with dapagliflozin in both high as well as low risk patients.”
The findings have been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.