Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s oral diabetes drug Jardiance may keep diabetic eye disease from worsening in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a report in JAMA Ophthalmology.
Researchers analyzed US health insurance claims data on more than 80,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, including 7,831 closely-matched pairs with diabetic eye disease and another 34,239 pairs without the eye disease.
In each pair, one patient had received Jardiance, a pill from a class of drugs known as SGLT2 inhibitors, and the other received a DPP4 inhibitor such as Merck’s Januvia or Boehringer Ingelheim’s Tradjenta. On average, they were tracked for eight months after starting treatment.
The risk of developing a new case of diabetic eye disease was the same regardless of which drug patients were taking. But the risk that existing diabetic eye disease would worsen was 22 per cent lower in patients who started taking Jardiance, the researchers found.
The study was not a randomized trial and cannot prove that Jardiance actually slowed progression of the so-called diabetic retinopathy. Still, the authors concluded, “these findings may be helpful when weighing the risks and benefits of various glucose-lowering agents in adults with type 2 diabetes.”
