Thursday, April 12, 2012

Metformin may slow prostate cancer growth

The use of a commonly prescribed oral diabetes treatment in men with prostate cancer before prostatectomy appears to help reduce certain metabolic parameters and slow the growth rate of the disease, according to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Chicago.
Anthony M. Joshua, MBBS, PhD, of Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network in Toronto, and colleagues evaluated 22 men with confirmed prostate cancer who had been assigned up to 500 mg of metformin (Fortamet, Glucophage, Glumetza, Riomet) three times per day prior to undergoing prostatectomy.
"This gave us the ability to compare what the prostate cancer looked like when it was first diagnosed to what it looked like when the prostate cancer was removed from the body," Dr. Joshua said. "We were able to directly measure the effect of metformin on the prostate cancer."
Patients were assigned metformin for a median duration of 41 days. During that time, none of the men reported grade 3 adverse events, and all of them underwent prostatectomy with no adverse effect related to use of metformin.
The researchers found that metformin significantly reduced fasting glucose, insulin growth factor-1, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio.
"Although these are preliminary results, metformin appeared to reduce the growth rate of prostate cancer in a proportion of men," Dr. Joshua said. "Also, it appeared to reduce one of the main growth pathways that may have contributed to the overall growth of the tumor."
These results may have implications for men with prostate cancer who also have diabetes or early undiagnosed diabetes and for men with prostate cancer whose tumors have characteristics that make them sensitive to metformin, he added.
The study was funded by the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, the Jewish General Hospital Foundation, and the Terry Fox Foundation.

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