It’s passé to think of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor drugs as agents that primarily treat hyperglycemia because their major clinical role has rapidly morphed into treating or preventing heart failure and chronic kidney disease.
Dr. Yehuda Handelsman
This change suddenly thrust primary responsibility for prescribing these drug into the hands of cardiologists and nephrologists, though endocrinologists, diabetologists, and primary care physicians remain in the prescribing mix, experts agreed at the virtual annual scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association.
“Glucose lowering plays little or no role in the cardiorenal protection from drugs in the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor class,” said David Z. Cherney, MD, a nephrologist and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
The SGLT2 inhibitor drugs “belong to cardiologists and nephrologists,” declared endocrinologist Yehuda Handelsman, MD, an endocrinologist and diabetes specialist who is medical director of The Metabolic Institute of America in Tarzana, Calif.
But therein lies a problem. “Cardiologists and nephrologists often say that they don’t want to start SGLT2 inhibitors because they do not want to interfere with the glucose reducing medications a patient takes,” Dr. Cherney added.
“Cardiologists are absolutely afraid to prescribe SGLT2 inhibitors,” claimed John J.V. McMurray MD, a professor of medical cardiology at the University of Glasgow. “Cardiologists need to talk with diabetologists about the importance of treating heart failure” in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), and diabetologists “need to help cardiologists understand how to use these and other effective glucose-lowering drugs that reduce cardiovascular disease risk,” said Dr. McMurray during the ADA sessions.
“I don’t think any medical specialty owns this drug class,” said Silvio E. Inzucchi, MD, professor of medicine at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., and director of the Yale Medicine Diabetes Center. “No permission is needed” from an endocrinologist for another specialist to prescribe an SGLT2 inhibitor to patients with T2D or to appropriate patients without diabetes, he maintained.
The need for greater involvement by cardiologists in prescribing SGLT2 inhibitors to patients with T2D was underscored in findings recently reported by Dr. Inzucchi and associates. They analyzed the physician encounters that patients with T2D had with cardiologists and endocrinologists during 2017 at two U.S. health systems: one centered around clinicians affiliated with Yale Medicine and Yale University, and a second with clinicians drawn from the staffs of the Saint Luke’s Health System, including Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo.
During 2017, the two systems has outpatient encounters with 109,747 patients with T2D, who averaged 67 years of age and were roughly evenly split between women and men: 43% had prevalent cardiovascular disease, including 30% with coronary artery disease and 15% with heart failure. These patients had more than 110,000 physician visits, and the number of these consultations with a cardiologist was double the number with an endocrinologist, Dr. Inzucchi and associates recently reported (Cardiovasc Endocrinol Metab. 2020 Jun;9[2]:56-9).
Among the 30% of T2D patients with prevalent cardiovascular disease, the consultation rate with a cardiologist was four times greater than with an endocrinologist; among the 15% with heart failure, a visit with a cardiologist was nearly seven times more common that with an endocrinologist.
“Based on these data, cardiovascular specialists encouraging the use of these medications, or, if comfortable, actually prescribing these medications, would likely significantly hasten the adoption of evidence-based glucose-lowering therapies in those patients most apt to benefit from them,” concluded the study’s authors.
Dr. Cherney has been a consultant to or has received honoraria from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, and Sanofi. Dr. Handelsman has been a consultant to or speaker on behalf of Amarin, Amgen, Applied Therapeutic, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Esperion, Gilead, Janssen, Merck, Merck-Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, Regeneron, and Sanofi. Dr. McMurray’s employer, the University of Glasgow, received payments from AstraZeneca for his involvement in trials involving dapagliflozin. Dr. Inzucchi has been a consultant to or helped run trials for Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi/Lexicon, and vTv Therapeutics.