Direct-acting oral anticoagulants (DOACs) were introduced in 2008 for the treatment of thrombo-embolic diseases. Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors (DPP4-inhibitors) and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP1-agonists), both incretin-based therapies, were introduced in 2007 and (late) 2006 respectively, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study aimed to gain insight in the uptake, practice variation and correlation in the adoption of DOACs and incretin-based therapies

Prescription data from general practices in the Dutch Nivel Primary Care Database from 2007-2019 were used. Per year 46 to 424 general practices and 179,933 to 1,654,376 patients were included. In 2019, the mean percentage of patients per practice using DOACs or incretin-based therapies was 54.9% and 9.7%, respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) decreased from 0.75 to 0.024 for DOACs and from 0.33 to 0.074 for incretin-based medicines during the study period. No clear correlation was found between the prescription of DOACs and incretin-based therapies.