Background: Diabetes mellitus is a known risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD), but does this risk vary with antidiabetic medications is still unclear. This meta-analysis aims to compile evidence from the literature to assess the risk of idiopathic PD with various oral antidiabetic medications.
Methods: Databases PubMed, CENTRAL, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase were searched till 5th April 2023. Adjusted outcomes were pooled to generate a hazard ratio (HR) on the risk of PD with different antidiabetic medications.
Results: Fifteen studies with 2,910,405 diabetic patients were eligible. Pooled analysis failed to show any significant difference in the risk of PD among users of metformin (HR: 1.05 95% CI: 0.91, 1.22 I2 = 81%), glitazones (HR: 0.84 95% CI: 0.68, 1.05 I2 = 91%), glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists (HR: 0.63 95% CI: 0.26, 1.55 I2 = 33%), and sulfonylureas (HR: 1.13 95% CI: 0.96, 1.32 I2 = 76%). However, a meta-analysis of four studies showed that dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor use was associated with reduced risk of PD in diabetics (HR: 0.69 95% CI: 0.56, 0.86 I2 = 46%). Insufficient data was available on sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors, α-glucosidase inhibitors, and glinides.
Conclusions: Limited retrospective evidence indicates that DPP4i may reduce the risk of idiopathic PD in diabetics. Metformin, sulfonylureas, glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists, and glitazones were not associated with any change in the risk of PD. Further studies taking into confounding factors and using a common comparator group are needed to strengthen present evidence.
Keywords: Diabetes; Hypoglycemics; Metformin; Neurodegenerative disease.
© 2023. Fondazione Società Italiana di Neurologia.