Search

The management of hyperglycemia in patients admitted to hospital is mainly based on insulin therapy. However, the positive and rapid effects of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) on cardiorenal outcomes raises the possibility that they might confer benefits to hospitalized patients. In recent, well designed, randomized trials (SOLOIST-WHF and EMPULSE) recruiting inpatients with heart failure (HF), SGLT2i demonstrated the potential to improve survival and quality of life and reduce the number of HF events, time to first HF event, hospitalizations, and urgent visits for HF compared with placebo. They were also well tolerated, whereas incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis was low. In EMBODY, empagliflozin was shown to be protective against the deleterious effects of cardiac injury in patients with acute myocardial infarction. In DARE-19, the administration of dapagliflozin to inpatients with cardiometabolic risk factors and COVID-19 was based on the hypothesis that the anti-inflammatory properties of SGLT2i could alleviate organ damage. Although the findings did not reach statistical significance, the efficacy and safety profiles of the drug were encouraging. These promising findings in the field of cardiometabolic medicine set the stage for future research to explore whether the benefits of gliflozins can expand to inpatients with non-cardiometabolic disorders, including sepsis, cirrhotic ascites, and malignancies. The concept of inpatient use of SGLT2i has evolved greatly over the past few years. The latest evidence suggests that SGLT2i may be effective and safe in the hospital setting, provided patients are carefully selected and closely monitored. Real-world data will prove whether present hope about inpatient use of gliflozins will transform into future confidence., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Sotagliflozin is a dual sodium-glucose co-transporter (SGLT) 2 inhibitor, manifesting a 20-fold higher inhibitory activity for SGLT2 than for SGLT1. Differences in SGLT2 over SGLT1 selectivity of the available agents have been proposed to relate to variability in efficacy and safety characteristics. In contrast to other SGLT2 inhibitors, the cardiorenal effects of sotagliflozin in type 2 diabetes had not been explored until recently, when the results of SOLOIST-WHF (focusing on heart failure [HF] outcomes) and SCORED (focusing on renal outcomes) were published. In SOLOIST-WHF, sotagliflozin reduced the risk of the primary composite outcome of cardiovascular (CV) death and hospitalizations and urgent visits for HF. The findings showed that the risk reduction was consistent in people with reduced but also in those with preserved ejection fraction (EF). In SCORED, sotagliflozin significantly reduced the primary end point of CV deaths, hospitalizations for HF, and urgent visits for HF. A reduction in glycated hemoglobin was evident even in participants with estimated glomerular filtration rate values below 30 mL/min/1.73 m 2 . SCORED is also the first trial to illustrate the benefits of the class across the full range of albuminuria. Moreover, the endpoint of stroke was significantly reduced by 34% in the sotagliflozin compared with the placebo group. The findings of the two studies provide novel insights into the clinical utility of SGLT2 inhibitors, particularly with respect to the early initiation in stable HF, the benefits in HF with preserved EF, the glucose-lowering efficacy in people with severe renal impairment and their potential to improve atherosclerotic vascular disease, including stroke, outcomes., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)