Comparison between liraglutide and dulaglutide on the incidence or progression of eye and kidney complications.

AIMS: To evaluate and compare the risk of diabetic retinopathy and kidney disease between once-daily liraglutide and once-weekly dulaglutide in Japanese participants with type 2 diabetes (T2D). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 331 participants newly initiated on once-daily liraglutide 0.9 mg or once-weekly dulaglutide 0.75 mg between 2015 and 2020 were included in this study. We used propensity score-based inverse probability of treatment weighting to adjust for baseline characteristics between the two groups. The participants were divided into three cohorts according to retinopathy, albuminuria, and glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The primary outcomes were the incidence or progression of diabetic retinopathy or kidney disease (albuminuria or reduced estimated GFR (eGFR) <60 mL/min/1.73 m). The incidence rate and risk of outcomes were compared between the two groups using Poisson regression and Cox proportional hazard models. RESULTS: Over a mean follow-up of 4.4 and 3.6 years in the liraglutide and dulaglutide groups, respectively, there were no differences between the two groups in terms of the risk of incidence of retinopathy and reduced GFR (hazard ratio (HR): 0.98 [0.60-1.60] and 0.82 [0.36-1.84]). Dulaglutide showed a lower incidence or progression rate but similar risk of albuminuria compared to liraglutide (54.7 vs 25.8 per 1,000 person-years (P = 0.04), HR: 0.51 [0.25-1.05]). CONCLUSIONS: Our study showed that once-daily liraglutide and once-weekly dulaglutide have similar risks for retinopathy, albuminuria, and reduced GFR.