Injectable Semaglutide vs Dulaglutide in Individuals at Cardiovascular Risk

This is a non-randomized, non-interventional study that is part of the Randomized Controlled Trials Duplicated Using Prospective Longitudinal Insurance Claims: Applying Techniques of Epidemiology (RCT-DUPLICATE) initiative (www.rctduplicate.org) of the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. It is intended to assess the comparative effectiveness of semaglutide vs dulaglutide on cardiovascular outcomes in individuals typically treated in clinical practice who are at low, moderate, and high cardiovascular risk with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and overweight.

Although many features of the target trial cannot be directly replicated in healthcare claims, key design features, including outcomes, exposures, and inclusion/exclusion criteria, were selected to proxy those features from the target trial. Randomization cannot be achieved in healthcare claims data but was proxied through a statistical balancing of measured covariates according to standard practice.

The database study will be a new-user active-comparative study, conducted using 3 national United States claims databases, where the effect of semaglutide vs dulaglutide on the composite end point of all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, or stroke will be assessed. Clinical guidelines during the study period recommended both injectable semaglutide and dulaglutide for the same indications of glucose lowering and cardiovascular risk reduction.