Semaglutide and its analogs did not increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer

Israeli scientists analyzed a cohort of more than half a million people and found no statistically significant association between taking glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (the best known of which is semaglutide) and the development of pancreatic cancer in adults with type 2 diabetes. The average follow-up time for the patients was about seven years. The study is published in JAMA Network Open.

Several studies have previously shown that patients taking glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1, GLP-1) receptor agonists have an increased risk of developing pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. This work prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a warning about new safety data on these drugs and to order several additional studies that confirmed the link. However, more recent meta-analyses have not found an association between taking GPP-1 agonists with either acute pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer. However, in most studies, patients were not followed long enough, and in 2022, an analysis of the FDA database again showed a link between the drugs and neoplasms.

So a team of scientists led by Rachel Dankner of Chaim Sheba Medical Center analyzed this link on a cohort of 543595 patients with type 2 diabetes who were followed for an average of 6.1 years (median follow-up was 7 years). For comparison, the researchers took patients who were receiving insulin therapy. The average age of the cohort was 59.9 years.

The prevalence of pancreatitis was similar in both groups. The primary analysis also showed that the overall annual incidence rates of pancreatic cancer were similar among patients in both groups. The risk of neoplasms was not increased when the results were adjusted for duration of treatment, smoking, age, and socioeconomic status. Doctors attributed the statistically insignificant increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer in patients taking insulin to the greater age of participants in this group.

These results show that the increasingly popular glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists do not increase the risk of pancreatitis and pancreatic neoplasms in the long term. However, more research, including meta-analyses, is needed to recognize their safety.