Sulfonylurea Use in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and COPD: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study

We conducted this study to investigate the long-term outcomes of sulfonylurea (SU) use in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). We used propensity-score matching to identify 6008 pairs of SU users and nonusers from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2017. Cox proportional hazard models were used to compare the risks of mortality, cardiovascular events, non-invasive positive pressure ventilation, invasive mechanical ventilation, bacterial pneumonia, lung cancer, and hypoglycemia between SU users and nonusers. In the matched cohorts, the mean follow-up time for SU users and nonusers was 6.57 and 5.48 years, respectively. Compared with nonusers, SU users showed significantly lower risks of mortality [aHR 0.53(0.48–0.58)], cardiovascular events [aHR 0.88(0.81–0.96)], non-invasive positive pressure ventilation [aHR 0.74(0.6–0.92)], invasive mechanical ventilation [aHR 0.57(0.5–0.66)], and bacterial pneumonia [aHR 0.78(0.7–0.87)]. A longer cumulative duration of SU use was associated with a lower risk of these outcomes. This nationwide cohort study demonstrated that SU use was associated with significantly lower risks of cardiovascular events, ventilation use, bacterial pneumonia, and mortality in patients with COPD and T2D. SU may be a suitable option for diabetes management in these patients.