Pharmacy dispensing patterns for sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor (SGLT2i) and glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP1-RA) medications show lower prescribing for patients of racial and ethnic minorities, and the rate of SGLT2i prescriptions is low among patients with indications for therapy, according to two recent studies. Luis A. Rodriguez, PhD, MPH, from Kaiser Permanente, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study of adults with type 2 diabetes from six large US care delivery systems to examine pharmacy dispensing of SGLT2i and GLP1-RA medications. The cohort included 681,823 patients who were followed for a median of six years. The researchers found that from 2014 to 2022, there was an increase in the age-, sex-, and site-adjusted rate of annual pharmacy dispensing of SGLT2i and GLP1-RA medications (from 0.1%-12.2% and 0.3%-3.8%, respectively). In the fully adjusted models, SGLT2i and GLP1-RA dispensing was lower for racial and ethnic minority patients as compared with White patients. Jung-Im Shin, MD, PhD, and colleagues characterized SGLT2i prescription patterns by indication for therapy in US patients with or without diabetes in 2022. A total of 760,337 patients with diabetes were included in the study; the researchers found that SGLT2i medications were prescribed for 11.2%, 11.2%, and 7.1% of patients with indication present, absent, or unknown, respectively.
