Diabetes drug may prevent liver cancer

pill
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A drug commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes might help prevent patients from developing liver cancers.

In a study published this month in the journal Cancer Causes & Control, Harvey J. Murff, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that patients taking had a reduced rate of liver cancer compared to patients taking an alternative anti-diabetes drug.

While other previous studies have found associations between metformin and decreased risk of several cancer types, most of them have been impacted by biases related to differences in treatment time between cases and controls, as well as confounding factors such as and glycemic control.

The authors carefully controlled for these factors in a study of patients with diabetes included in national Veterans Health Administration databases. They found no association between metformin use and the incidence of 10 solid tumor types—other than liver cancer.

Their work suggests that metformin should be further studied clinically for the prevention of .

More information: Harvey J. Murff et al. Metformin use and incidence cancer risk: evidence for a selective protective effect against liver cancer, Cancer Causes & Control (2018). DOI: 10.1007/s10552-018-1058-4

Citation: Diabetes drug may prevent liver cancer (2018, September 24) retrieved 19 March 2024 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-diabetes-drug-liver-cancer.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Explore further

Diabetes drug metformin inhibits multidrug-resistant breast cancer

2 shares

Feedback to editors