Real-World EHR Signals from a Cohort of Blinded Incretin Trial Participants Motivate Novel Indication Opportunities

The study suggests that pramlintide may have unique effects on renal function and blood pressure compared to other therapies, but the clinical significance of these findings remains uncertain.

Summary and findings

This study evaluated real-world longitudinal biomarker trajectories in participants of a blinded trial involving pramlintide, semaglutide, and tirzepatide. The analysis compared changes in weight, HbA1c, and renal function among these therapies. The findings suggest potential differences in physiological responses associated with masked medication exposure.

Abstract

Understanding organ-specific effects of multi-agonist metabolic therapies beyond weight loss remains challenging, particularly while randomized clinical trials are ongoing and treatment allocation remains blinded. Here, we evaluated whether real-world longitudinal biomarker trajectories can provide early hypothesis-generating signals associated with masked trial-medication exposure. Using propensity-matched, de-identified electronic health records from a large federated health network, we compared changes in laboratory and physiologic biomarkers across receptor-defined metabolic therapies. Semaglutide, tirzepatide, and pramlintide served as reference therapies representing GLP-1 receptor, dual GIPR-GLP1R, and amylin-pathway pharmacology, respectively. Individuals with documented participation in a blinded CagriSema/placebo clinical trial were analyzed as a single masked exposure group because active treatment assignment could not be determined from routine-care records. Twenty-five CagriSema/placebo participants were propensity matched 1:5 to tirzepatide (n=125) and empagliflozin (n=125). At 6 months, the masked CagriSema/placebo cohort showed similar changes in weight and HbA1c compared with matched tirzepatide-treated patients (weight, -7.7% vs -10.2%, P=0.27; HbA1c, -2.8% vs -5.1%, P=0.69), but larger increases in estimated glomerular filtration rate (+26.4% vs +6.5%, BH P=0.028). Compared with matched empagliflozin-treated patients, the masked cohort demonstrated larger reductions in weight (-7.7% vs -3.5%, P=0.048), mean arterial pressure (-12.0% vs -1.0%, BH P<0.001), creatinine (-17.4% vs -2.4%, BH P=0.020), and greater increases in eGFR (+26.4% vs +6.4%, BH P=0.030). To provide pharmacologic context, patients with type 2 diabetes receiving basal insulin who initiated pramlintide were independently matched to tirzepatide (652 pairs) and semaglutide (761 pairs). Tirzepatide and semaglutide were associated with larger HbA1c reductions than pramlintide at 6 months (-9.0% vs -3.0%, BH P<0.001; -10.1% vs -3.5%, BH P<0.001). However, after normalization for weight loss, pramlintide demonstrated greater blood pressure reduction per kilogram of weight lost than tirzepatide for both systolic (-4.9 vs -3.4% per kg, BH P=0.046) and diastolic blood pressure (-5.7 vs -3.4% per kg, BH P=0.029), whereas tirzepatide and semaglutide showed similar weight-normalized laboratory responses. Medication-transition analyses did not support co-intervention confounding, and single-cell transcriptomic analyses demonstrated substantially broader expression of amylin receptor components (CALCR, RAMP1/2/3) than GIPR or GLP1R in the kidney (9.8-14.7-fold). These findings illustrate how real-world longitudinal biomarker analyses can complement ongoing blinded clinical trials by identifying early, hypothesis-generating physiologic signals associated with masked trial-medication exposure. The observed renal and blood-pressure patterns, together with receptor-expression analyses, motivate prospective evaluation after trial unblinding to determine whether they reflect amylin-pathway biology or other treatment-associated effects.

Limitations

Not reported in abstract.

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