Healthcare resource utilization in patients treated with empagliflozin in East Asia

Aims/introduction: We investigated healthcare resources utilization in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients treated with empagliflozin, a sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitor, versus dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors in clinical practice in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Materials and methods: We analyzed the Japanese Medical Data Vision database (December 2014-April 2018), the South Korean National Health Information Database and the Taiwanese National Health Insurance claims database (both May 2016-December 2017). T2D patients initiating empagliflozin, 10 or 25 mg, or a DPP-4 inhibitor were matched 1:1 via propensity scores (PS). We compared inpatient care needs, emergency room (ER) visits, and outpatient visits between treatment groups using Poisson regression and Cox proportional hazards models, pooled across countries by random-effects meta-analysis.

Results: We identified 28,712 pairs of PS-matched patients; mean follow-up was 5.7-6.8 months. Empagliflozin-treated patients had 27% lower risk of all-cause hospitalization compared with DPP-4 inhibitor-treated patients (rate ratio [RR] 0.73, 95% CI 0.67-0.79), and 23% reduced risk for first hospitalization (hazard ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.73-0.81). Risk for ER visit was 12% lower with empagliflozin than DPP-4 inhibitors (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.83-0.94) while risk for outpatient visit was 4% lower (RR 0.96, 95% CI 0.96-0.97). These findings were generally consistent across countries, regardless of baseline cardiovascular disease, and in the subgroup initiating empagliflozin with the 10 mg dose.

Conclusions: Empagliflozin treatment was associated with lower inpatient care needs and other healthcare resource utilization than DPP-4 inhibitors in routine clinical practice in East Asia in this study.

Related Products

Cat.No.	Product Name	Information
S8022	Empagliflozin	Empagliflozin is a potent and selective SGLT-2 inhibitor with IC50 of 3.1 nM, exhibits >300-fold selectivity over SGLT-1, 4, 5 and 6. Phase 3.

Related Targets

SGLT