Metformin is one of the drugs used to lower blood glucose levels in cases of type-2 diabetes.
Sadly, patients with Type-2 Diabetes have a greater risk of developing cancer; and shorter survival times.
In Cancer Watch, we have repeatedly covered the problems associated with blood glucose levels and the increased risk of cancer, along with reduced survival rates.
Now in a meta-analysis of 20 papers involving over 13,000 patients reported by Dr Ming Yin et al in the Oncologist (November 15th 2013), the conclusion is that metformin helps increase survival times in cancer patients with type-2 Diabetes, better than other plasma glucose-reducing drugs.
Editor of the Oncologist, Bruce Chabner, said this study had removed concerns that metformin might have some causal effect, and that metformin could actually play a part in tumour reduction by helping to lower plasma glucose levels. As we repeatedly tell readers, glucose is the main fuel for a cancer cell.
Other specific studies have shown that metformin increases survival in endometrial cancer (1) and ovarian cancer (2).
Refs:
(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24189334
(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23208739