Lower risk of hear failure.

The article Cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in patients with type 2 diabetes following initiation of sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors versus other glucose-lowering drugs (CVD-REAL Nordic): a multinational observational analysis, recently published in Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology,  shows that the use of sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in normal clinical practice is associated with lower risk of heart failure, cardiovascular disease and overall mortality, compared with the use of other glucose-lowering drugs used for type 2 diabetes.

We think these are interesting data, as we can retrieve information from several national registries. In Scandinavia we have good such health registers and therefore the ability to carry out high quality studies covering the entire population. It is interesting to see how consistent findings are in all the countries we have data from. Studies such as these can never replace good prospective, randomized, controlled clinical studies, but may supplement such studies by including a wider range of patients than those that may be included in controlled studies.

We have established several international research groups around these databases which are highly stimulating and have already published 3 articles in outstanding international journals and given a number of abstract presentations at international cardiology and diabetic conferences. Work is continuing and new analyzes and more publications are planned for the future. Participants from Norway and Oslo Diabetes Research Center are Hanne Løvdal Gulseth and Kåre I. Birkeland.