Use of metformin in adults with diabetes linked to lower risk of long COVID

Adults who use the prescription drug metformin to deal with their sort 2 diabetes have a decrease danger of growing lengthy COVID or dying after a COVID-19 an infection than folks with diabetes who take different anti-diabetes drugs, based on a latest giant research. The findings, revealed within the journal Diabetes Care, have been based mostly on well being knowledge from tens of millions of U.S. sufferers and will have broader implications for using metformin in lengthy COVID prevention typically.

A scientific trial in 2023 confirmed that remedy with metformin, generally used to assist management blood sugar, diminished the danger of lengthy COVID by as a lot as 40% in almost 1,300 U.S. adults with obese or weight problems, most of whom didn’t have diabetes. To see whether or not the drug had an identical impact in folks with diabetes, researchers examined digital well being file knowledge for almost 38 million People from two giant U.S. databases.

The researchers in contrast well being information from 75,996 adults taking metformin for his or her sort 2 diabetes to 13,336 information from sufferers who weren’t taking metformin however have been utilizing different varieties of diabetes medicines. Researchers have been particularly taking a look at what number of sufferers both died or have been identified with lengthy COVID inside six months after an infection. They discovered that sufferers taking metformin had a 13% to 21% decrease incidence of lengthy COVID or demise than these within the non-metformin group.

Scientists are usually not clear how metformin might stop lengthy COVID, however they speculate about the potential of a number of mechanisms that cut back irritation, lower viral ranges, and suppress the formation of disease-related proteins.

Metformin can have unwanted side effects and must be used with warning in some situations. For these and different causes, folks mustn’t take the drug except prescribed by a physician.

Lengthy COVID is marked by a variety of signs—together with persistent fatigue, mind fog, and chest ache—that modify from individual to individual and may final for weeks, months, or years after an infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Whereas charges of recent instances have decreased since early within the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of individuals are nonetheless residing with it.