Metformin tied to longer prostate cancer survival

Veronica Hackethal, MD
NEW YORK | Thu Aug 15, 2013


(Reuters Health) - In older men with diabetes and prostate cancer, taking the diabetes drug metformin was linked to a lower risk of death, according to a new study.

Researchers found metformin's apparent benefits accumulated over time. Among men with diabetes in Ontario, Canada, who were over age 66, the study found a 24 percent reduction in prostate-cancer mortality for every six months of metformin use, and a similarly lower risk of death from any cause for the first six months.

"Among diabetic men with prostate cancer metformin should be considered the drug of choice, not only for diabetes control but possibly to improve prostate cancer outcomes," Dr. David Margel, a urologist at Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, Israel, and lead author of the study, told Reuters Health in an email.

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Chemoprevention for Prostate Cancer: New Data

Medscape Medical News -

Zosia Chustecka

Aug 14, 2013

Long-term data confirm the finding that finasteride reduces the risk for prostate cancer by about a third, but they also show no effect on overall survival or on survival after a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

The new data, from an 18-year follow-up of men taking part in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT), are published in the August 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The new data should reopen the debate about using finasteride for the prevention of prostate cancer, says Eric Klein, MD, from the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio, who was not involved in the study.

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