Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly’s oral diabetes drug Jardiance may keep diabetic eye disease from worsening in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a report in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Researchers analyzed U.S. health insurance claims data on more than 80,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, including 7,831 closely matched pairs with diabetic eye disease and another 34,239 pairs without the eye disease.

In each pair, one patient had received Jardiance, a pill from a class of drugs known as SGLT2 inhibitors, and the other received a DPP4 inhibitor such as Merck’s Januvia or Boehringer Ingelheim’s Tradjenta. On average, they were tracked for eight months after starting treatment.

The risk of developing a new case of diabetic eye disease was the same regardless of which drug patients were taking. But the risk that existing diabetic eye disease would worsen was 22% lower in patients who started taking Jardiance, the researchers found.

The study was not a randomized trial and cannot prove that Jardiance actually slowed progression of the so-called diabetic retinopathy. Still, the authors concluded, “these findings may be helpful when weighing the risks and benefits of various glucose-lowering agents in adults with type 2 diabetes.”