BACKGROUND: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration revised the labels of sodium-glucose transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in December 2015 to inform users regarding the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). As more drugs of this class are approved and their indications are expanded, this serious adverse effect has been increasingly reported.
OBJECTIVE: This review evaluated observational studies to inform the prevalence of SGLT2-inhibitor-associated DKA compared with other antihyperglycemic agents.
METHODS: A systematic review was conducted in PubMed and EMBASE until 19 July 2022 (PROSPERO: CRD42022385425). We included published retrospective cohort active comparator/new user (ACNU) and prevalent new user studies assessing SGLT2-inhibitor-associated DKA prevalence in adult patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) against active comparators. We excluded studies which lacked 1:1 propensity score matching. The JBI Checklist for Cohort Studies guided the risk-of-bias assessments. Meta-analysis was conducted based on the inverse variance method in R software.
RESULTS: Sixteen studies with a sample of 2,956,100 non-unique patients met the inclusion criteria. Most studies were conducted in North America (n = 9) and adopted the ACNU design (n = 15). Meta-analysis of 14 studies identified 33% higher DKA risk associated with SGLT2 inhibitors (HR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.14-1.55, p < 0.01). Meta-regression analysis identified the study location (p = 0.02), analysis principle (p < 0.001), exclusion of chronic comorbidities (p = 0.007), and canagliflozin (p = 0.04) as significant moderator variables.
CONCLUSIONS: Despite limitations related to heterogeneity, generalisability, and misclassification, the results of this study show that SGLT2 inhibitors increase the prevalence of DKA among adult T2DM patients in the real world. The findings supplement evidence from randomised controlled trials and call for continued vigilance.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.