Oral diabetes medications other than dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors are not associated with bullous pemphigoid: A Finnish nationwide case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP4is) used to treat diabetes have been reported to be associated with an increased risk of bullous pemphigoid (BP). There are no previous reports analyzing the risk of BP in patients who are using other diabetes medications.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association between diabetes medications other than DPP4i and development of BP.

METHODS: We investigated the prevalence of diabetes among patients with BP and the association between the use of diabetes drugs (excluding DPP4i, metformin, and insulin) and BP by analyzing national Finnish registry data for 3397 patients with BP and 12,941 patients with basal cell carcinoma as controls.

RESULTS: Our results show that 19.6% of patients with BP have type 2 diabetes. Use of none of the investigated medications was associated with an increased risk of BP.

LIMITATIONS: Because this was a registry-based study, it was not possible to verify the accuracy of the diagnoses. The risk of BP in users of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists could not be analyzed.

CONCLUSION: Our study shows that the investigated diabetes drugs are not associated with an increased risk of BP in a Finnish patient database, indicating they can be safely used in this population. Generalization of these results to other populations will require further study.