Metformin may help prevent lung cancer in smokers

Metformin is cheap and widespread and generally used to lower blood glucose in Type 2 diabetics, however it was reported last Monday at a Washington meeting of the American Assn. for Cancer Research, that it may also be used to prevent lung cancer in smokers.

Metformin inhibits a hormone called insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1, which explains its anti-diabetes activity, but the research revealed that IGF-1 also plays a crucial role with the development of cancer and Metformin may actually inhibit it.

Indeed, in a study involving breast cancer patients, research discovered that diabetic women treated for breast cancer with metformin responded three times better to their chemotherapy treatment.

Metformin could aid prostate cancer

According to Dr. Cristiano Ferrario of McGill University in Montreal, who was reporting at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting on genitourinary cancers last month, Metformin could also inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells, albeit by inhibiting a different receptor.

Tests using Metformin carried out on mice showed that those who were exposed to a tobacco carcinogen known as nicotine-derived nitrosamine - which normally induces tumors in experimental animals quite easily - showed that the rodent tumour burden reduced by 40 or 50 percent when Metformin was administered orally, and by 72 percent when Metformin was injected.

Metformin has also been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease not directly related to diabetes. The main problem however, is that Metformin is now a generic drug which inhibits the incentives for large pharmaceutical companies to launch expensive trials to discover Metformin's true benefits.

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