medwireNews: A meta-analysis of randomised trials indicates that gliptin treatment is associated with a small but significantly increased risk of acute pancreatitis among patients with Type 2 diabetes.
The risk was elevated 1.79-fold among 18,238 patients who received gliptins in the SAVOR-TIMI 53, EXAMINE and TECOS trials, compared with the 18,157 who received placebo, but the absolute risk was just 0.13%.
Researchers Ivan Tkáč (Pasteur University Hospital, Košice, Slovakia) and Itamar Raz (Hadassah Hebrew University Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel) write in Diabetes Care that this “is quite low because it means that for 1,000 gliptin-treated patients we may anticipate one to two extra cases of [acute pancreatitis] during a 2-year period.”
The team restricted the analysis to randomised trials to ensure that risk factors for acute pancreatitis, which can be common in diabetes patients, were evenly distributed between patients taking gliptins and placebo. They believe that unrecognised imbalances may account for the conflicting results of previous observational studies.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2016