Patients with breast cancer and metabolic comorbidities have increased risks for cancer recurrence and death.This retrospective study suggested that GLP-1 agonist use for diabetes or obesity was associated with lower all-cause mortality and improved recurrence-free survival in breast cancer.However, outside experts raised a series of concerns about the study, including mortality effect sizes not seen in GLP-1 drug trials and missing data that could point to confounding from unmeasured factors.
Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists in breast cancer patients was linked to lower mortality and recurrence risk in a retrospective study, but experts are questioning the quality of the underlying data.
At 10 years, the risk of all-cause mortality in those with concurrent diabetes was 91% lower with GLP-1 agonist use compared with insulin or metformin use (HR 0.09, 95% CI 0.06-0.15). And for those with obesity, the risk was 65% lower compared with no GLP-1 drug use (HR 0.35, 95% CI 0.21-0.58), reported Bernard Fuemmeler, PhD, MPH, of the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center in Richmond, Virginia, and colleagues.
Interestingly, no such association between GLP-1 agonist use and mortality was observed when compared with SGLT2 inhibitors in an unadjusted analysis (HR 0.97, 95% CI 0.82-1.14), according to the findings in JAMA Network Open, though adjustment for covariates showed a modest association with reduced mortality that favored GLP-1 use (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.68-0.88).
