Can Insulin Cause Other Diabetic Complications As Well As Increased Mortality in Type 2 Diabetes Patients?

Exogenous insulin may be associated with an increased risk for diabetes-related complications, cancer and all-cause mortality among patients with type 2 diabetes….

 

Researchers from Cardiff University and the University Hospital of Wales in the United Kingdom conducted a retrospective cohort study of 84,622 type 2 diabetes patients pooling from the UK General Practice Research Database, 2000-2010.

The patients must have been on one of the following diabetic therapies: metformin monotherapy, sulfonylurea monotherapy, insulin monotherapy, metformin plus sulfonylurea, and insulin plus metformin. The primary end point was risk for the first major adverse cardiac event, first cancer or mortality. The secondary end point included any of the individual primary endpoints plus microvascular complications.

The results showed that the insulin monotherapy group has a higher adjusted hazard ratio compared with other groups in both the primary end point and all-cause mortality. According to the researchers, "There is a clear need to review the way in which exogenous insulin is used in people with type 2 diabetes and to establish in detail the risk-benefit profile at differing stages of the natural history of the disease and in phenotypically different subgroups."

CJ Currie. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2013; 98:668-677