Emulating a Randomized Controlled Trial of Long-Acting Insulins and Cardiovascular Events Using Real-World Data for Patients With Type 2 Diabetes.

AIMS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have high internal validity but often have limited generalizability. To our knowledge, there have been no previous studies emulating RCTs using real-world data to evaluate the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) treated with long-acting insulin analogues.

METHODS

We emulated the DEVOTE trial of insulin degludec vs. glargine among patients with T2DM using data from the United Kingdom's Clinical Practice Research Datalink. DEVOTE eligible and ineligible subpopulations were created. Cox proportional hazards models with inverse probability of treatment weighting were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and corresponding confidence intervals (CIs) for MACE comparing new users of insulin degludec to new users of insulin glargine overall and in the eligible/ineligible subpopulations.

RESULTS

There were 10 430 patients in the overall population, 5280 in the DEVOTE eligible population, and 5150 in the DEVOTE ineligible population. The overall (HR: 1.36, 95% CI: 0.83, 1.86) and DEVOTE eligible populations (HR: 1.07, 95% CI: 0.63, 1.58) were compatible with findings from the DEVOTE trial (HR: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.78, 1.06) for the risk of MACE. Due to a low number of events, the DEVOTE ineligible population had deviations in point estimates and wider CIs (HR: 2.19, 95% CI: 0.30, 3.83).

CONCLUSION

The risk of MACE among patients with T2DM newly prescribed insulin degludec compared to insulin glargine was consistent between the overall population and the DEVOTE eligible subpopulation, while the DEVOTE ineligible population had discrepant point estimates.