Concern remains, and should feature in discussions with patients Although many providers and some patients know about the potential risks of pancreatic or thyroid cancer with use of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists,1 2 3 risk of breast cancer has also recently arisen as a potential risk with these drugs. The US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency separately conducted pooled analyses of four weight management trials that investigated the use of 3.0 mg liraglutide (a type of GLP-1 receptor agonist).4 5 In these pooled analyses, 12 (0.29%) breast cancer events were reported in the liraglutide arms versus two (0.08%) events in the placebo arms. Given the rare occurrence of these events, it was unclear whether this difference was due to chance alone or a true increase in breast cancer risk. The LEADER trial (liraglutide effect and action in diabetes: evaluation of cardiovascular outcome results) compared liraglutide at a lower dose of …
