Incretin-based drugs and the risk of pancreatic cancer

Incretin-based drugs are relatively new and are used to treat type 2 diabetes. Despite their success in treatment, there were concerns the drugs could lead to the development of pancreatic cancer. A team of Canadian researchers therefore compared incretin-based drugs with sulfonylureas to determine if such a risk exists. A total of 972,384 patients making up 2,023,441 person–years were analyzed. Of those, 1,221 patients were newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, an incidence rate of 0.60 per 1,000 person–years.