Purpose-built for physicians
Patients who were prescribed GLP-1 receptor agonists for type 2 diabetes demonstrated increased risks for psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis and autoimmune thyroiditis vs. those treated with dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, according to data.
However, the researchers, who published their findings in ACR Open Rheumatology, additionally found that GLP-1 drugs for diabetes were associated with lower risks for dermatomyositis and bullous pemphigoid, compared with dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibition.
“As GLP-1 receptor agonists and other antidiabetic agents become more widely used, understanding their immunologic safety has become increasingly important,” Arjun Mahajan, MS, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Healio. “As one example, weight loss from GLP-1 receptor agonists could be associated with a lower risk for developing certain autoimmune diseases. Thus, we sought to better characterize the comparative risks for incident autoimmune diseases across these major drug classes.”
In the current study, Mahajan and colleagues gathered electronic health record data for patients with type 2 diabetes from 152 health care organizations in the TriNetX federated health research network. The aim was to assess the immunologic safety of DPP-4 inhibitors, GLP-1 receptor agonists and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors as monotherapy. Individuals with no prior autoimmune disease were included.
