Clinical Characteristics and Satisfaction of Liraglutide Treatment among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Prospective Study

BACKGROUND: Evaluation of patient-reported results, treatment satisfaction, in particular, is popularly gaining recognition as crucial to the assessment of the efficiency of new therapies. The aim of this study is to examine the clinical features and treatment satisfaction with liraglutide in insulin-dependent obese patients having uncontrolled diabetes. METHODS: A prospective study was performed for 12 weeks using 64 type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients, 30 to 70 years of age, who came in for treatment to the Diabetes Treatment Center in Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from November 2017 to July 2018. All the patients enrolled in this study were given liraglutide in addition to their existing treatment. For the first week, they were subcutaneously administered 0.6 mg once per day, which was gradually raised to 1.2 mg after 1 week, and the final given dose went up to 1.8 mg per day until the study period was completed. Purposive and suitable selection of the respondents was performed at their convenience. They were interviewed adopting the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire (Arabic version) at baseline and after 12 weeks. Besides, the clinical variables like hemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)), fasting blood sugar (FBS), total daily insulin dose (TDD), number of injections, and hypoglycemia/weeks were also recorded at baseline and at the end of the study. RESULTS: In comparison with the baseline values, notable positive differences were identified in the domains of treatment satisfaction, namely, satisfied with current treatment (P = .0001), frequency of perceived hyperglycemia (P = .0001), frequency of perceived hypoglycemia (P = .0001), convenience of current treatment (P = .0001), understanding diabetes (P = .0001), recommend the current treatment (P = .018), and continue the present treatment (P = .0001) when the study is completed. After 12 weeks, the addition of liraglutide to the existing treatment showed significant positive changes on FBS (P = .0001), HbA(1c) (P = .001), TDD (P = .0001), number of injections (P = .0001), documented hypoglycemia/weeks (P = .0005), and body weight (P = .0001) in comparison with the baseline values. CONCLUSIONS: The addition of liraglutide to the existing treatment raised the level of treatment satisfaction and minimized the frequency of hypoglycemic/hyperglycemic events apart from the other clinical variables.