Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist semaglutide reduces atrial fibrillation incidence: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) are new anti-hyperglycaemic drugs with proven cardiovascular (CV) benefit in diabetic and non-diabetic patients at high CV risk. Despite a neutral class effect on arrhythmia risk, data on semaglutide suggest a possible drug-specific benefit in reducing atrial fibrillation (AF) occurrence.

Objective: To perform a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to assess the risk of incident AF in patients treated with semaglutide compared to placebo.

Methods and results: Ten RCTs were included in the analysis. Study population encompassed 12,651 patients (7285 in semaglutide and 5366 in placebo arms), with median follow-up of 68 months. A random effect meta-analytic model was adopted to pool relative risk (RR) of incident AF. Semaglutide reduces the risk of AF by 42% (RR .58, 95% CI .40-.85), with low heterogeneity across the studies (I² 0%). At subgroup analysis, no differences emerged between oral and subcutaneous administration (oral: RR .53, 95% CI .23-1.24, I² 0%; subcutaneous: RR .59, 95% CI .39-.91, I² 0%; p-value .83). In addition, meta-regression analyses did not show any potential influence of baseline study covariates, in particular the proportion of diabetic patients (p-value .14) and body mass index (BMI) (p-value .60).

Conclusions: Semaglutide significantly reduces the occurrence of incident AF by 42% as compared to placebo in individuals at high CV risk, mainly affected by type 2 diabetes mellitus. This effect appears to be consistent independently of the route of administration of the drug (oral or subcutaneous), the presence of underlying diabetes and BMI.

Keywords: atrial fibrillation; glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor agonists; overweight; semaglutide.