Yes, Jardiance (empagliflozin) is an SGLT2 inhibitor. It belongs to a class of medications that lower blood sugar by changing how your kidneys handle glucose. Other drugs in the same class include canagliflozin (Invokana) and dapagliflozin (Farxiga). What makes SGLT2 inhibitors notable is that their benefits extend well beyond blood sugar control, and Jardiance is now FDA-approved for heart failure and chronic kidney disease in addition to type 2 diabetes.
How Jardiance Works in Your Body
SGLT2 is a protein in your kidneys that recycles glucose back into your bloodstream. Normally, as blood filters through your kidneys, this protein grabs glucose before it can leave in your urine and sends it back into circulation. Jardiance blocks that protein, so instead of being reabsorbed, the excess glucose passes out when you urinate. The result is lower blood sugar without directly affecting insulin production.
Because you’re essentially flushing calories out of your body, this mechanism also leads to modest weight loss and a mild drop in blood pressure. Both effects happen as a natural consequence of how the drug works, not through a separate pathway.
What Jardiance Is Approved to Treat
Jardiance started as a diabetes medication, but its approved uses have expanded significantly. The FDA currently approves it for four distinct purposes:
- Type 2 diabetes: As an add-on to diet and exercise for adults and children aged 10 and older.
- Heart failure: To reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalization in adults with heart failure, regardless of whether they have diabetes.
- Chronic kidney disease: To slow kidney function decline and reduce the risk of kidney failure in adults whose disease is at risk of progressing.
- Cardiovascular protection: To reduce the risk of cardiovascular death in adults with type 2 diabetes who already have established heart or blood vessel disease.
The heart failure and kidney disease approvals are particularly significant because they mean Jardiance is prescribed to many people who don’t have diabetes at all.
Blood Sugar and Weight Effects
When used on its own for type 2 diabetes, Jardiance typically lowers A1C by 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points. Adding it to another diabetes medication produces an additional drop of about 0.6 percentage points on average. These reductions are meaningful but moderate compared to some other drug classes, which is why Jardiance is often paired with other treatments rather than used alone.
Weight loss averages around 2% of body weight, which works out to roughly 4 to 5 pounds for most people. That’s a consistent but modest effect. It comes from the glucose calories lost in urine each day, not from appetite suppression, so the weight loss tends to plateau after a few months.
Heart and Kidney Benefits
The cardiovascular data for Jardiance is striking. In a major trial of patients with type 2 diabetes and existing cardiovascular disease (the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial), empagliflozin reduced cardiovascular death by 38% and heart failure hospitalizations by 35% compared to placebo. These results were large enough to reshape how cardiologists think about diabetes treatment.
The kidney protection data is similarly strong. A large meta-analysis found that empagliflozin reduced the risk of chronic kidney disease progression by 30% and the risk of kidney failure specifically by 34%. These benefits appear to come from the drug’s effects on pressure within the kidneys and its ability to reduce the workload on filtering units, not just from lowering blood sugar. That’s why Jardiance helps protect kidneys even in people without diabetes.
Common Side Effects
The most characteristic side effect of Jardiance is genital yeast infections, a direct consequence of glucose passing through the urinary tract. In clinical trials, yeast infections affected about 4 to 6% of women taking Jardiance compared to roughly 1.5% on placebo. For men, genital fungal infections occurred in about 1.5 to 3% on the medication versus 0.4% on placebo. These infections are treatable but can be recurrent for some people.
Urinary tract infections are slightly more common on Jardiance as well, though the difference from placebo is smaller. In women, about 17 to 18% experienced UTIs on Jardiance compared to 16.6% on placebo. For men, rates were low across the board, around 3 to 4%.
Increased urination and mild dehydration are also common, especially in the first few weeks. Drinking enough water matters more on this medication than it might otherwise.
Ketoacidosis Risk
One serious but uncommon risk with all SGLT2 inhibitors, including Jardiance, is a type of ketoacidosis where blood sugar may appear normal or only slightly elevated. This is different from the very high blood sugar levels that typically signal ketoacidosis in diabetes, which can make it harder to recognize. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, excessive thirst, shortness of breath, and confusion. If you experience these symptoms while taking Jardiance, they warrant immediate medical attention even if your glucose readings look fine.
Dosing
Jardiance is taken as a single tablet once daily in the morning, with or without food. The starting dose is 10 mg. If that’s well tolerated, your prescriber may increase it to 25 mg. The simplicity of once-daily dosing with no meal timing requirements is one reason SGLT2 inhibitors have become popular across multiple conditions.