Comparative Longitudinal Evaluation of Systemic Inflammatory Markers in Type 2 Diabetes Treated with Four Oral Antidiabetic Drug Classes

TL;DR

This study compares how four types of diabetes drugs affect inflammation in patients with type 2 diabetes over time, finding that some drugs reduce inflammation more effectively.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel integration of longitudinal correlation and network analyses to evaluate drug-specific anti-inflammatory effects in T2DM.

Findings

SGLT-2 inhibitors and TZDs showed stronger anti-inflammatory effects compared to Biguanidines and DPP-4 inhibitors.

Systemic inflammatory indices (SII, NLR, PLR) remained reproducibly intercorrelated throughout treatment follow-up.

PCA revealed distinct inflammatory patterns for drug classes, with TZDs and SGLT-2 inhibitors clustering separately.

Abstract

Background: Systemic inflammation plays a central role in the pathogenesis and progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Hematologic inflammatory indices-such as the Systemic Immune-Inflammation Index (SII), Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR), Platelet-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (PLR), and Monocyte-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (MLR)-have emerged as accessible markers of chronic inflammation, yet longitudinal comparisons across oral antidiabetic therapies remain limited. This study uniquely integrates longitudinal correlation and network analyses in a large real-world T2DM cohort, allowing assessment of the temporal stability and class-specific inflammatory patterns across four oral antidiabetic therapies. Methods: This retrospective, longitudinal study analyzed 13,425 patients with T2DM treated with Biguanidines, Dipeptidyl Peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors, Sodium–Glucose Cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors or Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) between 2020 and 2024. Data were retrieved from the Probel® Hospital Information System and included baseline, early (30–180 days), and late (180–360 days) follow-up laboratory results. Systemic inflammatory indices were computed from hematologic parameters, and correlations among inflammatory and biochemical markers were assessed using Spearman’s coefficients. Results: At baseline, all hematologic indices were strongly intercorrelated (SII–NLR r = 0.83, p < 0.001; SII–PLR r = 0.73, p < 0.001), with moderate associations to C-reactive protein (CRP; r ≈ 0.3–0.4) and weak or no correlations with Ferritin (r ≈ −0.1). These relationships remained stable throughout follow-up, confirming reproducibility of systemic inflammatory coupling. Longitudinally, SII and NLR showed modest early increases followed by significant declines at one year (p < 0.05), while PLR and MLR remained stable. Class-specific differences were observed: SGLT-2 inhibitors and TZDs demonstrated stronger and more integrated anti-inflammatory networks, whereas Biguanidines and DPP-4 inhibitors exhibited moderate coherence. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) explained 62.4% of total variance and revealed distinct clustering for TZD and SGLT-2 groups, reflecting class-specific inflammatory modulation. Conclusions: Systemic inflammatory indices (SII, NLR, PLR) provide reproducible and accessible measures of low-grade inflammation in T2DM. Despite overall inflammation reduction with treatment, drug-specific patterns emerged-SGLT-2 inhibitors and TZDs showed greater anti-inflammatory coherence, while Biguanidines and DPP-4 inhibitors maintained moderate effects.

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