SAFEGUARD · Safety Evaluation of Adverse Reactions in Diabetes

In 2010 a widely marketed drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) (rosiglitazone) was taken from the market as it was associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction, a T2DM complication it was actually supposed to prevent. This example shows several things. First, the approval requirements do not guarantee a longer term positive benefit risk profile. Second, large scale postmarketing studies are desperately needed to monitor the benefit risk profile throughout the lifecycle of T2DM drugs, and to achieve the required scale collaboration across countries is mandatory. Many novel T2DM drugs have come to the market, all on the basis of the same surrogate endpoints. New safety issues are constantly arising, such as potential associations with pancreatitis, pancreas cancer, bladder cancer, acute renal failure, etc. In the SAFEGUARD Consortium we have assembled an excellent multidisciplinary group of experts who collaboratively aim to quantify the cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and pancreatic safety risk of the T2DM drugs, in particular the more novel drugs by investigating 1) published clinical trials and observational studies