Penetration of new antidiabetic medications in East Asian countries and the United States: A cross-national comparative study

Background: The number of patients with diabetes is increasing particularly in Asia-Pacific region. Many of them are treated with antidiabetics. As the basis of the studies on the benefit and harm of antidiabetic drugs in the region, the information on patterns of market penetration of new classes of antidiabetic medications is important in providing context for subsequent research and analyzing and interpreting results. Methods: We compared penetration patterns of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States. We used the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, a random sample of the Hong Kong Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System, the Japan Medical Data Center database, and a 5% random sample of the US Medicare database converted to the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership’s Common Data Model to identify new users of oral antidiabetic medications. We standardized prevalence and incidence rates of medication use by age and sex to those in the 2010 Taiwanese population. We compared age, sex, comorbid conditions, and concurrent medications between new users of DPP-4 inhibitors and biguanides. Results: Use of DPP-4 inhibitors 1 year after market entry was highest in Japan and lowest in Hong Kong. New users had more heart failure, hyperlipidemia, and renal failure than biguanide users in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States while the proportions were similar in Japan. In a country with low penetration of DPP-4 inhibitors (eg, Hong Kong), users had diabetes with multiple comorbid conditions compared with biguanidine users. In a country with high penetration (eg, Japan), the proportion of users with comorbid conditions was similar to that of biguanide users. Conclusions: We observed a marked difference of the penetration patterns of newly marketed antidiabetics in different countries in Asia. Those results will provide the basic information useful in the future studies.