Comparison of General Practice and Pharmaceutical Dispensing Data for Pharmacoepidemiological Research: Assessing the Risk of Urinary-Tract Infections with Sodium Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitors for Diabetes

Background. This study compared results of a study undertaken using Australia’s general practice electronic health record database, MedicineInsight, to assess risk of urinary-tract infections with sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2) for diabetes, by undertaking the same study in a 10% random sample of data from the national Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data. Methods. Cohort studies were undertaken using deidentified data from the two national datasets. In each dataset, initiators of SGLT2 inhibitors were compared to initiators of dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors in the period Jan 2012 to Sep 2015. The risk of urinary-tract infections (UTI) was assessed in six-month follow-up after initiation of SGLT2 and DPP-4. Results. There were 1,977 people in the SGLT2 and 1,964 people in the DPP-4 cohort (MedicineInsight data) and 3,120 in the SGLT2 and 12,359 in the DPP-4 cohort (10% PBS data). In both datasets, the risk of UTI after initiation of SGLT2 was not significantly increased in comparison to DPP-4 cohort (MedicineInsight: 3.6% versus 4.9%; aHR=0.90, 95% CI 0.66-1.24; PBS: 3.0% versus 3.9%; aHR=0.90, 95% CI 0.72-1.13, 10%). Conclusions. Comparison of MedicineInsight data to PBS national pharmacy data demonstrated highly comparable results for the specific study question. MedicineInsight is a reliable source of data that can be used for pharmacoepidemiological studies.