Ozempic (Semaglutide) & Signal Identification

FDA initiated this pilot study in Sentinel to explore the use of TreeScan^TM for routine drug safety surveillance, using a use case of Ozempic (a specific form of semaglutide). TreeScan is a signal identification approach that scans thousands of health outcomes simultaneously while adjusting for multiple scenarios that can be used to monitor the underlying assumption of no clinical differences.

The study specifically sought to monitor non-pregnancy and non-cancer outcomes among new users of Ozempic compared to new users of sitagliptin among patients with type 2 diabetes. FDA determined the statistical alerts generated by the TreeScan analysis do not warrant further evaluation or action. This pilot demonstrated that tree-based scan statistics can be applied to the Sentinel Distributed Database using an active comparator design to simultaneously evaluate thousands of safety outcomes for medicines as an additional safety surveillance tool.