Objective: In the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2D), achieving glucose control often requires multiple therapies. The class of antidiabetic agents called incretin mimetics offers an alternative mechanism to diabetes management. This work describes the baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of a T2D population in a primary care setting before they initiated treatment with the incretin mimetic, exenatide. Methods: Patients were extracted from the General Electric (GE) electronic medical record (EMR) database from January 1, 2000 through June 30, 2007. Patients with T2D (diagnosis, oral antidiabetic drug prescription, two consecutive fasting blood glucose levels =126 mg/dL, or A1C =7.0%) were identified, as were those with at least one prescription for exenatide. Using these data, descriptive statistics were calculated for these populations. Results: Of the 11,601 patients with a prescription for exenatide, nearly all had T2D (96%). A total of 7425 of the patients with a prescription of exenatide were =18 years of age and had at least 395 days of records prior to the index date. Compared to the 510,623 T2D patients on other treatments with these same age and records restrictions in the GE EMR, those patients on exenatide were significantly heavier (204.2 lbs. vs. 244.2 lbs. (p<0.001)) with higher BMI (32.9 kg/m2 vs. 38.7 kg/m2 (p<0.001)). A larger percentage of the exenatide population was obese or extremely obese than the population on other treatments (89% vs. 61% (p<0.001)). The portion of the exenatide population with baseline A1C =9.0 was higher than that of the population on other treatments (56% vs. 12% (p<0.001)) and, compared to the total, exenatide patients had significantly higher mean A1Cs (7.2% vs. 8.1% (p<0.001)). Conclusion: These results suggest that exenatide is being added to T2D treatment regimens in obese patients with relatively high A1C levels to achieve better diabetes control.