Could metformin prevent diabetes in very high risk patients?

Metformin reduces the development of diabetes over 15 years, US researchers say.

The results come from a follow-up of patients in the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) that recruited patients at very high risk for diabetes and assigned them to either metformin or a lifestyle intervention program to address the major identified risk factors.

The post-randomisation follow-up study included more than 2000 individuals originally assigned to placebo or 850mg metformin twice daily.

Those assigned to metformin continued to take the drug from 2002, when the  DPP study officially ended, to 2017.

The mean cumulative exposure to metformin during follow-up was 8.75 years.

The study found that metformin reduced the incidence of diabetes by 17% compared with placebo when fasting or two-hour glucose levels after an oral glucose tolerance