A recent study suggests the cardiovascular benefits of GLP-1 drugs may disappear quickly when treatment stops.
According to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, interrupting or discontinuing treatment for as little as six months may be associated with an increased risk of major cardiovascular events.
Researchers tracked more than 333,000 U.S. veterans with Type 2 diabetes over three years and found that the longer patients remained off the medication, the greater their risk became. Two years after stopping treatment, the risk of heart attack, stroke and death was up to 22% higher than among those who remained on a GLP-1 drug.
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"Our data suggest this metabolic whiplash is detrimental to heart health," said senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a WashU Medicine clinical epidemiologist and chief of the Research and Development Service at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System. "Restarting the medication helped restore some protection, but only partially, showing that discontinuation leaves a lasting scar."
Researchers also found that restarting the medication after a treatment interruption appeared to provide less cardiovascular protection than maintaining continuous use.
"Clinicians should treat adherence to GLP-1 treatment as an important outcome in its own right -- not an afterthought," Al-Aly said.
The researchers emphasized the importance of continuous treatment, suggesting that minimizing interruptions may help maximize the drugs' cardiovascular benefits.
