Diabetes Management and Cardiovascular Risk: Are SGLT-2 Inhibitors the Safest?

Abstract

For five millennia, diabetes management has focused on controlling blood sugar and efforts to minimize the complications of this disease have depended on normalizing glucose. Since the 1970's, however, a growing awareness of the adverse effect of hypoglycemic agents on cardiac health has led to an increasing focus on the effect of diabetes management on cardiac risk. This was brought into focus in the early years of this century with issues around rosiglitazone and resulted in the United States Food and Drug Administration, mandating that new drug applications for diabetes include documentation of no adverse effect on cardiac health. We have recently reported on the potential benefit of SGLT-2 inhibitors in terms of glucose control; recent data suggesting a specific cardiac benefit of this class of agent have obligated us to update our understanding of this class of drugs. This review focuses, in general, on the increasing awareness of the effects of diabetes medications on cardiac health and, more specifically, on newer agents, including incretin-based therapies and SGLT-2 inhibitors.