Risk of Hypoglycemia After Concomitant Use of Antidiabetic, Antihypertensive, and Antihyperlipidemic Medications: A Database Study

Hypoglycemia is the most important complication of antidiabetic medications. Most patients with diabetes mellitus take multiple medications. In this study, we explored clinical drug-drug interactions that result in hypoglycemia by analyzing the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report (JADER) database. The primary outcome was the report of hypoglycemia. The Noren and Gosho methods, which quantitatively measure the discrepancy between the observed and expected number of adverse events under the combination of 2 drugs, were used as the criteria for detecting drug-drug interactions. The JADER database contained patient characteristics with 468292 records, drug information with 2973172 records, and adverse reactions with 741016 records. We noted that hypoglycemia was reported in 6208 patients. Concomitant use of linagliptin/glibenclamide, sitagliptin/glibenclamide, sitagliptin/buformin, exenatide/voglibose, mitiglinide/perindopril, repaglinide/barnidipine, alogliptin/cilnidipine, teneligliptin/barnidipine, teneligliptin/urapidil, exenatide/candesartan, voglibose/barnidipine, voglibose/guanabenz, or exenatide/tocopherol was noted using the 2 criteria for drug-drug interactions. Concomitant use of teneligliptin and barnidipine produced the highest values for the 2 criteria. The second-and third-highest values were observed for teneligliptin/urapidil and exenatide/candesartan combinations, respectively. The same analysis was performed using the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System database to assess the validity of the result from the JADER database. The concomitant use of sitagliptin/buformin, exenatide/voglibose, repaglinide/barnidipine, teneligliptin/barnidipine, teneligliptin/urapidil, exenatide/candesartan, voglibose/barnidipine, voglibose/guanabenz, or exenatide/tocopherol was detected in both the JADER and Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System databases. Combination therapy with the drugs listed above would show potential interactions that could result in hypoglycemia in patients with diabetes mellitus.