Research
Hormonal
Metformin use in patients with diabetes is associated with a reduced risk of cancer and cancer-specific mortality, although methodological biases in early studies may have inflated these estimates.
If you take Metformin for diabetes, you may benefit from a potential reduction in cancer risk, although this is not yet definitively proven. Continue taking it as prescribed for your diabetes management.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
The first medication to be carefully studied was metformin, due to an early observational study in 2005 that reported a reduction in risk of cancer in patients with diabetes on metformin.
Why this rating
Early studies showed benefit, but later studies accounting for biases showed null associations; ongoing RCTs are evaluating this.
Source
Review: Diabetes, Obesity, and Cancer—Pathophysiology and Clinical Implications
Iliana C. Lega et al. · Endocrine Reviews · 2019
DOI 10.1210/endrev/bnz014
narrative_reviewCited 345×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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