Practice pearl: the effect of canagliflozin on HbA1c and blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Review of: Wilding JPH, Blonde L, Leiter LA, et al. Efficacy and safety of canagliflozin by baseline HbA1c and known duration of type 2 diabetes mellitus. J Diabetes Complications. 2015;29(3):438–444; and Weir MR, Januszewicz A, Gilbert RE, et al. Effect of canagliflozin on blood pressure and adverse events related to osmotic diuresis and reduced intravascular volume in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. J Clin Hypertension. 2014;16(12):875–882.

Two authors did secondary analyses on the original research data for canagliflozin. Wilding et al. found that the degree of the lowering of the HbA1c in patients was greater in patients with a higher baseline HbA1c. Weir et al. found that the blood pressure lowering seen with canagliflozin was greater if the baseline blood pressures were higher. This shows that canagliflozin will have increased effects in more complicated patients.