Patients with polycythemia vera (PV) who received GLP-1a therapy had markedly better outcomes than patients who did not, according to a retrospective study presented at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology.
“GLP-1a therapy in patients with PV was associated with significantly reduced risks of all-cause mortality, myelofibrosis, VTE, and health care utilization,” wrote the authors, led and presented by Asfand Yar Cheema, MD, resident physician at Cleveland Clinic Fairview Hospital.
Dr. Cheema was awarded second place for top abstracts during the awards ceremony at SOHO 2025. (Guillermo Garcia-Manero, MD, won first place for the VERONIA phase 3 trial.)
Using the TriNetX database, Dr. Cheema and colleagues identified patients diagnosed with PV between 2010 and 2022 and compared those treated with a GLP-1a therapy to matched controls. A 1:1 propensity-score match balanced demographics, comorbidities, laboratory parameters, and use of cardiovascular medications that could influence mortality, according to Dr. Cheema in an interview with SOHO Insider.
Patients were followed for three years from diagnosis and treatment initiation to evaluate survival and key complications.
“At the end of the three years, we found a very promising result: patients on GLP-1 receptor agonists had lower odds of all-cause mortality, progression to myelofibrosis, venous thromboembolism, acute kidney injury, and hospitalizations compared with those who were not,” Dr Cheema said in the interview.
After propensity-score matching, 4,119 pairs of patients were analyzed. The investigators found that treatment with a GLP-1a therapy was linked to significantly lower odds of all-cause mortality, progression to myelofibrosis, and venous thromboembolism. Those patients also had reduced odds of hospitalization, ICU admission, acute kidney injury, and ischemic stroke or TIA.
“These findings suggest GLP-1a has therapeutic benefits for this high-risk population, requiring urgent randomized controlled trials to confirm GLP-1a efficacy and safety in PV,” Dr. Cheema and colleagues wrote.
Reference
Cheema AY, Munir Mishaal, Mandala A. Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists and clinical outcomes in polycythemia vera: a large-scale propensity-matched cohort study. Abstract #MPN 642. Presented at the Society of Hematologic Oncology 2025 Annual Meeting; September 3-6, 2025; Houston, Texas.
