And against macular degeneration too
Metformin was associated with a reduction in the risk of age-related macular degeneration
Lina Medvedeva, XX2 century
According to a new study, patients taking metformin, a drug for the treatment of diabetes, show its protective effect against age-related macular degeneration. In a situation-controlled study, metformin use was associated with a 58% reduction in the risk of age-related macular degeneration on average.
Article by Brown et al. The Common Antidiabetic Drug Metformin Reduces Odds of Developing Age-Related Macular Degeneration is published in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.
Researchers from the University of Florida conducted a retrospective study, during which they found out whether the use of metformin is associated with a reduced risk of age-related macular degeneration. The scientists used the information of the university clinic about patients over 55 years old and compared each case of macular degeneration with three control cases.
The authors of the study noted that some previously published articles say that metformin can reduce the risk of developing certain eye diseases. But none of them specifically addressed macular degeneration.
The data of 1947 patients with macular degeneration who visited the clinic from June 2011 to June 2017 were compared with the data of 5841 patients from the control group. Further, it was possible to identify 505 patients with dry macular degeneration and 115 with wet. The authors of the study noted that it is impossible to determine the subtype of the diagnosed disease for the remaining patients.
Among the patients in the control group, 10.44% took metformin, while only 4.37% with macular degeneration had a history of taking this drug.
The researchers learned that the chances of developing macular degeneration among those who took metformin were significantly reduced. According to the scientists, they used both one-dimensional analysis and multiparametric logistic regression to calculate the chances.
The researchers wanted to make sure that the protective effect is really the result of the use of metformin, so they studied the use of other common drugs, including dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP4) inhibitors, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, tetracyclic antidepressants and statins. Many patients were prescribed these drugs, but none could be associated with a decrease in the chances of developing age-related macular degeneration. Some of them, on the contrary, correlated with increased chances of developing the disease.
The researchers found that diabetes itself is associated with a statistically significant reduction in the risk of age-related macular degeneration. However, it is assumed that the effect of the use of metformin is independent of the diagnosis of diabetes.
The analysis of the subgroups also showed that the use of metformin is associated with a decrease in the chances of further development of age-related macular degeneration, even in those who have already been diagnosed with both macular degeneration and diabetes. There were a total of 837 patients who had both diagnoses, of whom 84 were taking metformin.
Although neither the dosage of metformin nor the duration of taking the drug were taken into account when analyzing the risk of macular degeneration, the authors of the study cited references to previous studies in which it was assumed that each increase in the cumulative dose of metformin by 1 g showed a decrease in the chances of developing open-angle glaucoma by 0.16%. The cited study also revealed that the group taking metformin had the greatest chance of reducing the risk.
"This is a retrospective study, and a causal relationship cannot be established. Future studies using directed acyclic graphs may help in elucidating cause-and–effect relationships," the authors add, "A second blind randomized trial is in the process of investigating the effectiveness of using metformin to reduce dry macular degeneration. Future studies should continue to investigate the protective effects of metformin on age-related macular degeneration in large-scale clinical trials."
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