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Compound Evidence InstituteEvidence synthesis · established 2023Graded assessments of compounds, trials, methods and supply
Document set current to 30 July 2026
Evidence synthesis · Safety review

Exenatide in type 2 diabetes mellitus: tolerability and discontinuation

In the population defined for type 2 diabetes mellitus, what is the incidence of adverse events leading to discontinuation with Exenatide compared with its comparator?

Document identifier
CEI-ES-083
Series
Evidence synthesis
Version
2.0
Published
31 Jul 2024
Last reviewed
31 Jan 2025
Next review
31 Jul 2026
Identifier
10.71829/cei.syn.83
Certainty
High
Cycle
2024 Q3
Review type
Safety review
Search executed
03 Apr 2024

Templated review frame. This review question was generated by crossing an indication with a compound for which contributing trials exist. Its prose frame is templated and is shared with other questions of the same shape. Its included studies, its summary of findings and its certainty rating are computed from the underlying records and are not templated. The Institute publishes these questions because the alternative is to leave a question the document set can answer unanswered, and it labels them because the alternative is to present a templated frame as an authored one.

§1Abstract

§1.1Review question

In the population defined for type 2 diabetes mellitus, what is the incidence of adverse events leading to discontinuation with Exenatide compared with its comparator?

§1.2PICO frame

Table 1. The registered PICO frame. Any change made after protocol registration is recorded in the amendment log at §5 and is identified there as post hoc.

ElementAs registered
PopulationA disorder of glucose regulation characterised by insulin resistance with relative insulin deficiency, diagnosed by glycated haemoglobin, fasting plasma glucose or oral glucose tolerance criteria.
InterventionExenatide administered as subcutaneous twice daily (immediate release) or once weekly (poly(lactide-co-glycolide) microsphere extended release).
ComparatorThe comparator used in each contributing trial, reported per trial rather than pooled across comparator types.
OutcomesAnchor outcome for this indication: Change in HbA1c (%, mmol/mol). Additional outcomes: Proportion achieving HbA1c <7.0 % and ≤6.5 %; Change in fasting serum glucose; Change in body weight.

§1.3Method in brief

A review of harms, in which the absence of an event in a trial of conventional size is treated as uninformative rather than as reassurance. The protocol was registered with the Institute's secretariat before the search was executed. The search was run on 3 April 2024 across 8 sources and is reproduced in full at §2. Screening, extraction and certainty assessment were performed independently by two members of the secretariat with disagreement resolved by a third.[1,2]

§1.4Conclusion

High certainty evidence from 5 contributing trials bears on tolerability. Discontinuation for adverse events is reported in the summary-of-findings table alongside the efficacy outcomes rather than in an annex, because a trial reporting a given effect with high discontinuation is reporting a materially different result from one reporting the same effect with high persistence.

The conclusion rests on 5 contributing studies, listed with their extracted data at §3 and summarised outcome by outcome at §4.

§1.5Limitations

References cited on this page

References are numbered in order of first citation in this document. Each superscript in the text links to its entry below.

  1. Holman RR, Bethel MA, Mentz RJ, Thompson VP, Lokhnygina Y, Buse JB, Chan JC, Choi J, Gustavson SM, Iqbal N, Maggioni AP, Marso SP, Öhman P, Pagidipati NJ, Poulter N, Ramachandran A, Zinman B, Hernandez AF. Effects of once-weekly exenatide on cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes. New England Journal of Medicine 2017;377(13):1228–1239. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1612917 · PMID 28910237
  2. Buse JB, Rosenstock J, Sesti G, Schmidt WE, Montanya E, Brett JH, Zychma M, Blonde L. Liraglutide once a day versus exenatide twice a day for type 2 diabetes: a 26-week randomised, parallel-group, multinational, open-label trial (LEAD-6). The Lancet 2009;374(9683):39–47. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60659-0 · PMID 19515413

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