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Hyperplasia from GLP-1 drugs is “not a surprise,” say researchers

BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f2025 (Published 27 March 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f2025
  1. Deborah Cohen
  1. 1BMJ

A week after the US Food and Drug Administration announced that it was to review unpublished data from a group of unnamed researchers linking certain antidiabetes drugs with pancreatitis,1 the findings have been published in a specialty journal, Diabetes.2

The FDA’s statement said that glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) based drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes could raise the risk of pancreatitis and precancerous pancreatic lesions and induce pancreatic duct metaplasia.

However, the findings in the small study go further than the US agency suggested.

Studies have previously shown that GLP-1 based drugs may cause pancreatic inflammation and focal proliferation in the exocrine pancreas in rodents. And a 2011 study published in Gastroenterology showed increased signals in the FDA’s adverse event reporting system of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer in patients who used this class of drugs.3

So researchers from the University of California at Los …

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