To assess the differences in baseline characteristics among patients’ groups, Mood’s median test was used for continuous variables and the chi-squared test for categorical variables. Combination therapies with other antidiabetic drugs were also recorded. The safety profiles were assessed by incidence rates (IRs) of ADRs, expressed

as 1000 person-years selleck kinase inhibitor (sum of the duration of exposure from entry to event, discontinuation or data lock in August 2010). The relative risks (RRs) of hypoglycemic events were also calculated in relation to the associated glucose-lowering therapy. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, all cases with recorded discontinuation (any cause) or lost to follow-up (L-FU) were classified as “treatment discontinuation” (dependent variable, worst-case scenario). The independent variables were the demographic and clinical characteristics at enrollment (gender, age, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, fasting glucose, HbA1c, fasting C-peptide, and associated glucose-lowering

drugs). The waist circumference (less informative than BMI) and fasting glucose or C-peptide (less informative than HbA1c) were excluded. In a sensitivity test, the analyses were repeated in a subset of patients from centers compliant to follow-up >80% (exenatide, n = 10,388; sitagliptin, n = 18,278; vildagliptin, n = 7068; total L-FU, n = 2746 (7.7%)). The probability of reaching the target value of HbA1c <7% (53 mmol/mol) at the 3–4- and 8–9-month follow-up was check details tested by logistic regression in separate models for the three different drugs, having HbA1c at baseline as independent variable. In a sensitivity analysis, a less stringent glycemic control of HbA1c <8% (64 mmol/mol) was assessed. All analyses were performed by CINECA by means of the open-source R Project for Statistical Computing & Graphics, Version 2.15.0/2012 (www.r-project.org), Thiamet G developed at Bell Laboratories (now Alcatel-Lucent, Paris, France) for multivariate statistics and models, and by means of an SQL developer (Oracle)

for the descriptive part of the analysis. A total of 77,864 records (38,811 on sitagliptin, 21,064 on exenatide, and 17,989 on vildagliptin), corresponding to 75,283 patients, were registered by 3741 diabetes specialists in 1278 centers, either hospital (n = 790) or community based (n = 488), distributed throughout Italy. On average, 16.5/10,000 inhabitants aged ≥18 were included (from 8.2 to 28.8 in different Italian regions). The patients belonged to a fairly heterogeneous group, including a high proportion of cases scarcely represented in the trials supporting the marketing authorization of the three medicinal products. Over 50% of cases on exenatide and approximately 20% on DPP4-Is had severe obesity (BMI ≥ 35 kg/m2); exenatide patients exhibited higher median HbA1c and a greater percentage of cases with very poor metabolic control (HbA1c ≥ 11%, ≥97 mmol/mol).