Jardiance causes yeast infections because it forces excess sugar out of your body through urine, creating a sugar-rich environment in the genital area where yeast thrives. In clinical trials, women taking Jardiance developed genital yeast infections at roughly four times the rate of those on a placebo, with up to 6.4% of women affected compared to 1.5% on placebo.
How Jardiance Creates the Right Conditions for Yeast
Jardiance works by blocking a protein in your kidneys that normally reabsorbs sugar back into your bloodstream. With that protein blocked, your kidneys dump excess glucose into your urine instead. This is the whole point of the drug: lowering blood sugar by flushing it out. But that glucose-heavy urine passes through and around your genital area, and Candida (the fungus behind most yeast infections) feeds on sugar.
The warm, moist skin of the genital region already supports fungal growth under normal conditions. Add a steady supply of glucose from the urine, and yeast has an ideal environment to multiply. This isn’t a flaw unique to Jardiance. Every medication in its class (called SGLT2 inhibitors) carries the same risk for the same reason.
How Common These Infections Actually Are
The FDA’s pooled data from five placebo-controlled trials paints a clear picture. Among women, 5.4% on the 10 mg dose and 6.4% on the 25 mg dose developed genital yeast infections, compared to 1.5% on placebo. Among men, rates were 3.1% on the 10 mg dose and 1.6% on the 25 mg dose, versus just 0.4% on placebo. Women are affected significantly more often than men, which aligns with the fact that vaginal yeast infections are already common in the general population.
So while the relative increase in risk sounds dramatic (roughly a fourfold jump), the absolute numbers are still fairly low. The vast majority of people on Jardiance never develop a yeast infection from it.
Who Is Most at Risk
Your personal history matters more than almost anything else. A large study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care found that the single strongest predictor of getting a yeast infection on an SGLT2 inhibitor was having had one before. People with a genital infection in the year before starting the medication had over four times the risk compared to those with no history. Even an infection from more than five years earlier still raised the odds.
Women face roughly 3.6 times the risk that men do, independent of other factors. Higher body weight also increases vulnerability. Interestingly, blood sugar control (measured by HbA1c) did not predict infection risk for people on SGLT2 inhibitors, which suggests the drug’s own glucose-dumping mechanism is the primary driver rather than overall diabetes management.
For men specifically, being uncircumcised raises the risk because the foreskin traps moisture and glucose against the skin. Other contributing factors include obesity (particularly in postmenopausal women) and taking insulin or certain other diabetes medications alongside Jardiance.
Looking at the one-year risk: women with a history of prior genital infection had a 23.7% chance of developing one on an SGLT2 inhibitor, while women without that history had a 10.8% chance. For men, the numbers were 12.1% with prior history and 2.7% without.
What You Can Do to Lower Your Risk
Since the root cause is sugar-laden urine sitting against genital skin, the most practical steps revolve around keeping that area clean and dry. Good perineal hygiene after urinating helps remove the glucose before yeast can take advantage of it. Wearing breathable, moisture-wicking underwear reduces the warm, damp conditions that fungus prefers. Staying well hydrated may help dilute the concentration of glucose in your urine, though this hasn’t been formally studied in clinical trials for this specific purpose.
Keeping your blood sugar as well-controlled as possible through diet, exercise, and your overall medication regimen also helps, even though HbA1c wasn’t a strong predictor on its own. Less glucose in the blood means less glucose for the kidneys to dump.
Treatment and Whether to Stop Jardiance
If you do develop a yeast infection while on Jardiance, standard antifungal treatment typically resolves it, and in most cases you can keep taking the medication. The Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine notes that the favorable heart and kidney benefits of SGLT2 inhibitors generally outweigh the inconvenience of a treatable infection, so doctors rarely discontinue the drug for a single episode.
For severe infections, your doctor may temporarily pause Jardiance until the infection clears, then restart it. Even for people with recurrent yeast infections, these medications are not considered off-limits. The decision to permanently stop usually involves weighing the burden of repeated infections against the proven cardiovascular and kidney benefits that Jardiance provides.
A Rare but Serious Complication to Know About
In very rare cases, the genital infections associated with SGLT2 inhibitors can progress to a condition called Fournier’s gangrene, a rapidly spreading, life-threatening infection of the skin and tissue in the genital and perineal area. The FDA issued a safety warning about this in 2018. Warning signs include severe pain, tenderness, or swelling in the genital area along with fever or general malaise. This is a medical emergency. The condition is exceedingly rare, but it’s worth knowing the symptoms because early treatment is critical to outcomes.