Large-scale cardiovascular outcome trials and meta-analyses of new antihyperglycemic agents in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) demonstrated that these new agents reduce cardiovascular events, including heart failure hospitalizations, and may slow the progression of kidney disease [1–3]. For this reason, in more recent trials, antihyperglycemic agents are also tested in mixed cohorts of patients with and without DM, presenting a very high baseline cardiovascular risk, in general [3]. Although the clinical questions of the recent trials are principally oriented towards preventing macrovascular events, the role of glucose-lowering in the prevention of microvascular complications shall not be ignored [4].
