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New research · Endocrinology
BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 22h
StudyBMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2026

Risk of hair loss associated with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists in adults with type 2 diabetes: target trial emulation.

Huilin Tang, Bingyu Zhang, Yiwen Lu … Yong Chen
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EndocrinologyStudy

GLP-1 receptor agonists linked to higher non-scarring hair loss risk in type 2 diabetes.

Risk of hair loss associated with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists in adults with type 2 diabetes: target trial emulation.

Huilin Tang et al. · BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2026
Purpose

To examine the association between glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists and the risk of incident alopecia (hair loss) in adults with type 2 diabetes, compared with sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors.

Methods

Electronic health records from Penn Medicine.

Results

GLP-1 agonists had a 72% greater risk of non-scarring hair loss than DPP-4 inhibitors

HR 1.37 (95% CI 1.08 to 1.73)
null = 11.081.73
CI excludes the null - significant
More results

This study included 12 004 GLP-1 receptor agonist initiators and 15 221 SGLT-2 inhibitor initiators in the GLP-1 receptor agonist versus SGLT-2 inhibitor comparison and 11 964 GLP-1 receptor agonist initiators and 11 238 DPP-4 inhibitor initiators in the GLP-1 receptor agonist versus DPP-4 inhibitor comparison.

More results

After stabilised inverse probability of treatment weighting adjustment, use of GLP-1 receptor agonists was associated with a higher risk of alopecia than use of SGLT-2 inhibitors (hazard ratio 1.37, 95% confidence interval 1.08 to 1.73) or DPP-4 inhibitors (1.68, 1.28 to 2.20).

“
Conclusion

Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists was associated with an increased risk of non-scarring alopecia in adults with type 2 diabetes. Although the absolute risk is low, awareness of this potential effect may help to inform treatment decisions.

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