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Metformin and pancreatic cancer risk

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

Monotherapy with metformin appears to be associated with a lower risk of pancreatic cancer incidence than monotherapy with sulfonylurea (SU) in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) (1).

  • Epidemiological studies link administration of metformin with reduced incidence, recurrence and mortality of cancer in T2DMpatients.
  • Shi et al showed that there was survival benefit of metformin in pancreatic cancer patients concurrent with diabetes mellitus, suggesting metformin as an adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with pancreatic cancer.
  • Hu et al showed that compared with the no-use of metformin, metformin users with diabetes can reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer - compared with no use of metformin, the use of metformin could reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes by 18%.

Therefore, there seems to be some evidence suggesting benefit of use of metformin in terms of risk of pancreatic cancer in type 2 diabetes. There is no definitive evidence yet – but perhaps metformin may eventually become a cancer therapy as well as treatment for diabetes?

Reference:

  1. Mekuria AN, Ayele Y, Tola A, et al.Monotherapy with metformin versus sulfonylureas and risk of cancer in type 2 diabetic patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Diabetes Res 2019;2019:7676909
  2. Shi YQ, Zhou XC, Du P, Yin MY, Xu L, Chen WJ, Xu CF. Relationships are between metformin use and survival in pancreatic cancer
    patients concurrent with diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 Sep 11;99(37):e21687.
  3. Hu J, Fan HD, Gong JP, Mao QS. The relationship between the use of metformin and the risk of pancreatic cancer in patients with diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Gastroenterol. 2023 Feb 24;23(1):50.

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