Certain diabetes drugs are linked to lower risk of osteoporosis
The drugs were associated with an 18 percent reduction in the risk of incident osteoporosis compared with non-use among people with type 2 diabetes.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational cohort study evaluated 309,747 people with type 2 diabetes prescribed sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and 619,494 matched patients not receiving the medications in Taiwan between 2016 and 2022. The researchers matched participants by age, sex, and duration of diabetes using Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. They tracked new cases of osteoporosis, a disease that weakens bones.
In this comparison, taking SGLT2 inhibitors was associated with an 18 percent reduction in the risk of incident osteoporosis. A second analysis matched 274,329 patients in each group by propensity scores. In that group, the medication was consistently associated with a lower risk of incident osteoporosis, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.83. The abstract reported no adverse events or safety outcomes.
Why it matters
Osteoporosis is an age-related disease that weakens bones and leaves older individuals vulnerable to fractures. Because metabolic disorders and bone loss often progress together with age, investigating how diabetes therapies correlate with new cases of osteoporosis bears on maintaining skeletal health in aging patients.
Caveats
Because this was an observational database study rather than a randomized trial, it cannot establish that the drugs caused the lower risk. The findings reflect insurance records from people with type 2 diabetes in Taiwan and may not apply to individuals without diabetes or to different demographic groups.
The paper
Chung Shan Medical University Hospital; Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital
ESC Congress 2026 Abstract, Oct 26, 2026
Presented at ESC Congress 2026
