Friday, October 11, 2024
Home Diabetes Use of metformin in adults with diabetes linked to lower risk of long COVID

Use of metformin in adults with diabetes linked to lower risk of long COVID

by Medical Xpress
0 comment


Metformin 500mg tablets. Credit: public domain

Adults who use the prescription drug metformin to treat their type 2 diabetes have a lower risk of developing long COVID or dying after a COVID-19 infection than people with diabetes who take other anti-diabetes medications, according to a recent large study. The findings, published in the journal Diabetes Care, were based on health data from millions of U.S. patients and could have broader implications for the use of metformin in long COVID prevention generally.

A clinical trial in 2023 showed that treatment with metformin, commonly used to help control , reduced the risk of long COVID by as much as 40% in nearly 1,300 U.S. adults with overweight or obesity, most of whom did not have diabetes. To see whether the drug had a similar effect in people with diabetes, researchers examined electronic health record data for nearly 38 million Americans from two large U.S. databases.

The researchers compared health records from 75,996 adults taking metformin for their type 2 diabetes to 13,336 records from patients who were not taking metformin but were using other types of medicines. Researchers were specifically looking at how many patients either died or were diagnosed with long COVID within six months after infection. They found that patients taking metformin had a 13% to 21% lower incidence of long COVID or death than those in the non-metformin group.

Scientists are not clear how may prevent long COVID, but they speculate about the possibility of several mechanisms that reduce inflammation, decrease viral levels, and suppress the formation of disease-related proteins.

Metformin can have side effects and should be used with caution in some conditions. For these and other reasons, people should not take the drug unless prescribed by a doctor.

Long COVID is marked by a wide range of symptoms—including , brain fog, and —that vary from person to person and can last for weeks, months, or years after infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. While rates of new cases have decreased since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people are still living with it.

More information:
Johnson SG et al, Prevalent Metformin Use in Adults with Diabetes and the Incidence of Long Covid: An EHR-based Cohort Study from the RECOVER Program, Diabetes Care (2024). DOI: 10.2337/dca24-0032

Citation:
Use of metformin in adults with diabetes linked to lower risk of long COVID (2024, September 17)
retrieved 17 September 2024
from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-metformin-adults-diabetes-linked-covid.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.





Source link

You may also like

Leave a Comment

Edtior's Picks

Latest Articles

All Rights reserved, site designed by Yellohost.co.za