Response to Comment on: Butler et al. A Critical Analysis of the Clinical Use of Incretin-Based Therapies: Are the GLP-1 Therapies Safe? Diabetes Care 2013;36:2118–2125

I, on behalf of Butler et al. (1), thank Bjerre Knudsen et al. (2) for their comments and accept their statement that liraglutide was not withdrawn before euthanasia of the monkeys. Nyborg et al. (3) reported routine pathological examination in the pancreas of young healthy members of three species. A single transverse section of the midpart of the pancreas was stained with hematoxylin and eosin and examined unblinded in routine fashion by a toxicological pathologist at a time when no concerns had been raised about the possibility of pancreatic effects. The monkeys were presumably young as no pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia lesions were seen, implying that exposure to liraglutide was at an age equivalent to human childhood. The findings …