Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist semaglutide reduces atrial fibrillation incidence: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) are new anti-hyperglycaemic drugs with proven cardiovascular (CV) benefit in diabetic and non-diabetic patients at high CV risk. Despite a neutral class effect on arrhythmia risk, data on semaglutide suggest a possible drug-specific benefit in reducing atrial fibrillation (AF) occurrence.

Objective

To perform a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to assess the risk of incident AF in patients treated with semaglutide compared to placebo.

Methods and Results

Ten RCTs were included in the analysis. Study population encompassed 12,651 patients (7285 in semaglutide and 5366 in placebo arms), with median follow-up of 68 months. A random effect meta-analytic model was adopted to pool relative risk (RR) of incident AF. Semaglutide reduces the risk of AF by 42% (RR .58, 95% CI .40–.85), with low heterogeneity across the studies (I² 0%). At subgroup analysis, no differences emerged between oral and subcutaneous administration (oral: RR .53, 95% CI .23–1.24, I² 0%; subcutaneous: RR .59, 95% CI .39–.91, I² 0%; p-value .83). In addition, meta-regression analyses did not show any potential influence of baseline study covariates, in particular the proportion of diabetic patients (p-value .14) and body mass index (BMI) (p-value .60).

Conclusions

Semaglutide significantly reduces the occurrence of incident AF by 42% as compared to placebo in individuals at high CV risk, mainly affected by type 2 diabetes mellitus. This effect appears to be consistent independently of the route of administration of the drug (oral or subcutaneous), the presence of underlying diabetes and BMI.