Could Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) Inhibitors Be Beneficial?
So, what about SGLT2 inhibitors? Do they also have a potential role to play in managing people with OA, regardless of whether there is diabetes present? Perhaps, and their effect may be even greater than what’s been observed for GLP-1 receptor agonists, as data presented by epidemiologist S. Reza Jafarzadeh, DVM, PhD, suggested.
“While GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs have been reported to reduce OA risk, largely attributed to their weight loss effect, SGLT2 inhibitors may provide a greater protective effect on OA outcomes,” said Dr. Jafarzadeh, assistant professor at Boston University.
Sara Freeman/Medscape Medical News
Dr. S Reza Jafarzadeh
He presented data from a large analysis of new users of SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists within two claims databases — Merative (n = 603,471) and TriNetX (n = 1,202,972) — showing that SGLT2 inhibitors were associated with significantly lower risks for OA and the need for TKR.
Comparing new users of SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists in the Merative dataset, the relative risks and odds ratios for OA were a respective 0.96 and 0.80, and having a TKR, 0.88 and 0.76.
Similar results were seen using the TriNetX dataset, with respective relative risks and hazard ratios of 0.90 and 0.85 for OA, and 0.81 and 0.78 for TKR.
In an interview, Dr. Jafarzadeh said that the initial hypothesis was that because SGLT2 inhibitors have only a modest effect on weight loss, there would be no effect on OA outcomes.
“But we were surprised that it actually looked like they reduced the risk of OA outcomes even more than GLP-1 receptor agonists,” Dr. Jafarzadeh said.
Further work is needed to understand these data, but they could mean that SLGT2 inhibitors, like GLP-1 receptor agonists, may have a role to play outside their current use in type 2 diabetes.
The congress was sponsored by the Osteoarthritis Research Society International.
Dr. Czernichow disclosed ties with BariaTek Medical, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Fresenius, Janssen, Jellynov, Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, and ViiV Healthcare. Dr. Vincent had no relevant disclosures. Dr. Bay-Jensen is the chief technology officer and director of immunoscience at Nordic Bioscience, which funded the work in the poster she presented at OARSI 2024. The work presented by Dr. Çiftci and colleagues was funded by the Eurostars-2 joint program with co-funding from the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Dr. Çiftci had no personal disclosures to report. Dr. Chen’s work was supported by the government of Taiwan, and she had no financial conflicts of interest to disclose. Dr. Jafarzadeh had no conflicts of interest to disclose.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com .