Tumour Risk with Once-Weekly Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients: A Systematic Review

Mar 17, 2016Clinical drug investigation

Tumor risk linked to once-weekly diabetes drugs that activate GLP-1 receptors in type 2 diabetes patients

AI simplified

GLP-1 Therapies on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

Analysis of 26 randomized controlled trials with 16,090 patients showed that once-weekly GLP-1 receptor agonists did not increase the risk of tumors compared to other antidiabetic medications.

Once-weekly GLP-1 receptor agonists had a risk ratio of 1.02 for tumor incidence, indicating no significant increase compared to other antidiabetic drugs.
The findings were consistent regardless of the specific type of GLP-1 receptor agonist used or the duration of the trials.
Subgroup analyses revealed no increased tumor risk when compared to placebos, exenatide, liraglutide, insulin, or oral antidiabetic drugs.
The study found no increase in tumor risk across any tissue type examined.

AI simplified

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Once-weekly glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) are a novel class of injectable antidiabetic drugs. Previous studies indicated that GLP-1RAs (exenatide and liraglutide) might increase the incidence of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Here, we evaluated the clinical safety of once-weekly GLP-1RAs with respect to tumour risk.

METHODS: Relevant studies were selected from ClinicalTrials.gov. Randomized controlled trials that reported the incidences of neoplasms were included in our research. Outcomes were calculated as the risk ratio using the Mantel-Haenszel method and fixed-effects model.

RESULTS: Our analysis included 26 randomized controlled trials with 16,090 patients. Once-weekly GLP-1RAs did not increase the risk for tumours compared with other antidiabetic drugs [risk ratio (RR), 1.02; 95 % confidence interval (CI), 0.74-1.41; p = 0.91]; this finding was independent of the type of GLP-1RA administered (albiglutide, exenatide extended-release and dulaglutide) and duration of the trials (limited to ≥52 weeks). Subgroup analyses revealed that once-weekly GLP-1RAs did not increase tumour risk compared with placebos, exenatide and liraglutide, insulin or oral drugs. Additionally, once-weekly GLP-1RAs did not increase tumour risk in any tissue.

CONCLUSIONS: Compared with other antidiabetic drugs, once-weekly GLP-1RAs did not increase the risk for any tumour, and this finding was independent of the type of GLP-1RA administered and treatment duration. However, our study had many limitations, and further longer term trials with larger samples should be conducted in future to confirm our results.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (PDF) ↗View full text (HTML) ↗View full text ↗

Tumour Risk with Once-Weekly Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the glp-1 therapies brief