BackgroundThere are few large-scale studies evaluating the safety of the sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor, dapagliflozin, in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes. DONATE, a multicentre, single-arm, prospective, non-interventional study, is the first real-world study evaluating the safety of dapagliflozin in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes in routine clinical practice.MethodsBetween August 2017 and July 2020, patients with type 2 diabetes who had initiated dapagliflozin therapy and received ≥1 dose were prospectively recruited from 88 hospitals in China. Patients were subsequently followed up for 24 weeks; if patients discontinued dapagliflozin they were followed up for an additional 7 days after treatment discontinuation. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients with adverse events and serious adverse events, particularly key adverse events of special interest (AESI) including urinary tract infection, genital tract infection (typical symptoms with or without microbiological diagnosis) and hypoglycaemia (typical symptoms with or without blood glucose ≤3.9 mmol/L, or blood glucose ≤3.9 mmol/L without symptoms). Exploratory outcomes included the absolute change in metabolic parameters and the proportion of patients with other AESI including volume depletion, abnormal blood electrolytes, polyuria, renal impairment, diabetic ketoacidosis, hepatic impairment and haematuria.ResultsA total of 3000 patients were enrolled, of whom 2990 (99.7%) were included in the safety analysis set. Mean (SD) age was 52.6 (12.0) years, and 65.8% of patients were male. Mean (SD) duration of type 2 diabetes at enrolment was 8.4 (7.1) years. Mean (SD) treatment duration of dapagliflozin was 209.1 (157.6) days. Adverse events were reported in 35.4% (n= 1059) of patients during the 24-week follow-up period. Overall, 9.0% (n= 268) were related to treatment and 6.2% (n= 186) were serious. Urinary tract infection, genital tract infection and hypoglycaemia were reported in 2.3% (n= 70), 1.3% (n= 39) and 1.1% (n= 32) of patients, respectively. The proportion of patients with other AESI was also low: polyuria (0.7%;n= 21), volume depletion (0.3%;n= 9), renal impairment (0.3%;n= 8), hepatic impairment (0.2%;n= 7), haematuria (0.2%;n= 6) and diabetic ketoacidosis (0.1%;n= 2).ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that once-daily dapagliflozin was well tolerated in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes and the overall safety profile of dapagliflozin in clinical practice in China was consistent with that reported in clinical trials.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03156985. Registered on 16 May, 2017.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-023-02906-7.