STOCKHOLM ( updated with commentary ) — Patients with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease receiving the glucose-lowering agent empagliflozin (Jardiance, Boehringer Ingelheim/Lilly), a sodium glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor, were less likely to die than those taking placebo in the large, much-anticipated EMPA-REG OUTCOME study, hailed here as a landmark trial.
Dr Silvio Inzucchi
The benefit on survival was seen regardless of the cause of death — empagliflozin prevented one in three cardiovascular deaths, with a significant 38% relative risk reduction in cardiovascular mortality, as well as a significant 32% relative reduction in all-cause mortality.
CV death was one component of the primary composite outcome, which also included nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) or nonfatal stroke. It was the CV mortality benefit, however, that primarily drove the reduction in this end point.
"Empagliflozin is reducing death, the ultimate outcome," senior author of the study, Silvio Inzucchi, MD, of Yale Diabetes Center, New Haven, Connecticut, told Medscape Medical News. "This is a first in my lifetime — a diabetes drug trial that has shown improved outcomes in high-risk cardiovascular patients."
Dr Inzucchi was given multiple rounds of applause as he presented the findings of EMPA-REG OUTCOME here at the
