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Antidiabetic treatment is associated with a reduced risk of blood cancers
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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People using metformin are less likely to develop myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) over time, suggesting that the treatment may help prevent the development of some types of cancer, according to a study published in the journal Blood Advances.
Metformin is a therapy used to treat high blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes, which increases the effect of insulin, reduces the amount of glucose released by the liver, and helps the body use glucose. A meta-analysis of previous studies has linked this therapy to a reduced risk of gastrointestinal, breast, and urologic cancers, and a retrospective study of U.S. veterans found that metformin users had a reduced risk of both solid and hematologic cancers.
"Our team was interested in understanding other effects we see with commonly prescribed drugs like metformin," said Anne Stidsholt Rugh, MD, chief physician at Aarhus University Hospital and clinical associate professor at Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark.
"The anti-inflammatory effect of metformin was of interest to us because MPNs are highly inflammatory diseases. This is the first study to examine the association between metformin use and the risk of developing MPNs."
Myeloproliferative disorders are a group of diseases that affect how the bone marrow makes blood cells, leading to overproduction of red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets, which can lead to bleeding problems, increased risk of stroke or heart attack, and organ damage.
The researchers compared metformin use among patients diagnosed with MPN and a matched cohort from the general Danish population between 2010 and 2018.
Of the 3,816 MPN cases identified in the sample, only 268 (7.0%) people with MPN were taking metformin, compared with 8.2% (1,573 of 19,080) of controls who were taking metformin but were not diagnosed with MPN. Only 1.1% of MPN cases had been taking metformin for more than five years, compared with 2.0% of controls. The protective effect of metformin was observed across all MPN subtypes when adjusting for potential confounding factors.
"We were surprised by the magnitude of the association we saw in the data," said Daniel Tuiet Christensen, MD, a postdoctoral fellow at Aalborg University Hospital and lead author of the study.
"We saw the strongest effect in people who took metformin for more than five years compared with those who took the treatment for less than a year," Dr. Christensen added, noting that this makes clinical sense because MPNs are diseases that develop over a long time, like other cancers.
The researchers noted that although the protective effect of long-term metformin use was observed across all MPN subtypes, the study was limited by its retrospective, registry-based design. Additionally, they were unable to account for lifestyle factors that may influence cancer risk, such as smoking, obesity, and dietary habits.
Dr. Rugh noted that while the research team was unable to assess exactly why metformin appeared to protect against the development of MPN, they hope that more research will be conducted to better understand this phenomenon. In the future, the researchers aim to identify similar trends with myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia in population-level data for further study.