Assessment of Cardiovascular Risk With Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Receptor Agonists in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Using an Alternative Measure to the Hazard Ratio.

BACKGROUND

Randomized clinical trials with the aim of evaluating the cardiovascular risks associated with glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, lixisenatide, liraglutide, semaglutide, and exenatide, have been conducted. They showed different results among the agents, but the reason has not been explained.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the cardiovascular risks associated with GLP-1 receptor agonists by using an alternative measure to the hazard ratio.

METHODS

We used the difference in restricted mean survival time (RMST) as a measure of cardiovascular risks. Four randomized clinical trials with cardiovascular events as a primary endpoint, ELIXA (lixisenatide), LEADER (liraglutide), SUSTAIN-6 (semaglutide), and EXSCEL (exenatide), were reevaluated by estimating the RMSTs for each of the agents and placebo based on the reconstructed individual patient data for each time-to-event outcome from publicly available information.

RESULTS

The differences of RMSTs (GLP-1 receptor agonist minus placebo: point estimate and 95% CI) for primary composite endpoint of cardiovascular events were 0 days [-14, 14] in ELIXA (1080 days follow-up), 20 days [6, 34] in LEADER (1620 days follow-up), 8 days [1, 15] in SUSTAIN-6 (672 days follow-up), and 11 days [-3, 26] in EXSCEL (1825 days follow-up). As for the risk of other cardiovascular outcomes, there were no substantial differences between GLP-1 receptor agonists and placebo.

CONCLUSIONS

Liraglutide and semaglutide decrease the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events compared with placebo when using the difference in RMST. The previously reported result that GLP-1 receptor agonists do not increase the risk of cardiovascular outcomes compared with placebo is also confirmed.