Study Suggests Stopping Diabetes Drug Metformin Can Elevate The Risk Of Dementia

A cohort study has found that metformin, which is a diabetes drug might protect against the onset of dementia in elderly adults suffering from diabetes. The authors of the study examined the health data of 12,220 people who discontinued metformin, before having kidney dysfunction. They compared these people with 29,126 individuals who continued to take metformin. Then they assessed these participants by age and gender in both groups. This association was mainly independent of variations in HbA1c and insulin usage. The findings of the study have been released in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Experts have found that HbA1c level or insulin use accounts for accelerated detection of dementia by 0.07 years after 1 year of stopping metformin, however, after the 5-year mark, it does not account for dementia detection acceleration. The findings revealed that people who stopped having this diabetes drug without having any kidney disease were at a 21 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with dementia as compared to people who regularly used the drug for diabetes. Experts have said that it might be specifically advantageous to identify ways to regulate or reduce gastrointestinal negative impacts instead of swapping metformin with other agents for diabetic people who are at higher risk of dementia or who have a family history of neurological disorder, considering participants in this study have been kept on anti-diabetes medication after initial termination of metformin.

The findings of the cohort study reveal that people who have been suffering from diabetes and have been taking metformin have been at a 24 percent reduced risk of being diagnosed with dementia. A study published in 2020 also showed that elderly diabetic people who were on metformin were found to be at an 81 percent reduced risk of dementia. The findings have also shown that regular metformin users have been at a reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease and have been at a greater risk of having a low eGFR at the beginning of metformin.