You are seeing a patient recently diagnosed with heart failure and started on GDMT. You notice that their hemoglobin (HGB) has increased (12 → 13 g/dL) in the intervening weeks.
🤔Which medication is the likely cause of this increase in HGB?
2/12 - An Answer
Empagliflozin
💡All SGLT2 inhibitors have been associated with an increase in hematocrit/hemoglobin soon after initiation.
The average increase is 2.3% in hematocrit and 0.6 g/dL in hemoglobin.
The effect of SGLT2 inhibitors on HCT/HGB has been noted since the very first randomized control trial of dapagliflozin, published in 2010.
Initially, investigators assumed this was related to the diuretic effect of these drugs (i.e., a reduction in plasma volume led to an increase in HCT/HGB).
3/ The mutation in the Factor V gene conferring resistance to activated protein C was detailed the following year by a group in Leiden, The Netherlands.