Falsely Accused? Insufficient Evidence to Conclude that Sitagliptin is a Cause of Chronic Cough

Excerpt

A decade ago, a single-center case series was published describing 15 patients with type 2 diabetes who presented with cough, dyspnea and fatigue after initiation of therapy with sitagliptin [1]. Notably, all 15 subjects had evidence of allergic rhinitis, and 13 were maintained on an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, a class of drugs with a well-established, causal relationship to chronic cough through a mechanism of enhancement of cough reflex sensitivity [2]. Since then, not a single report of sitagliptin-associated cough can be found on a National Library of Medicine (PubMed) search. An informal poll of the Directors of 17 subspecialist Cough Centers worldwide (6 in the United States; 5 in the United Kingdom; 1 each in Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea) yielded no reports by any clinician of ever having had a case of presumed or suspected sitagliptin-associated cough (personal communication). …