Metformin reduced Long Covid

[EPguy]

Metformin is an old but well established diabetes drug. This study found a substantial benefit with metformin to prevent long covid. The attached plot shows this 41% reduction.

thelancet.com/journals/lani...

And up to 63% if taken in time:

"For participants who started metformin less than four days after their COVID symptoms started, metformin decreased the risk of long COVID by 63%."

news.unchealthcare.org/2023...

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By comparison Paxlovid was less effective in this report:

"The analysis showed that Paxlovid reduced the risk of long COVID-19 by 26% over a six-month period."

medicine.wustl.edu/news/pax...

Both studies were on VA patients but may not be comparable.

I recall reading elsewhere that metformin did not reduce the acute Covid course, while Pax is known to do that, so it could be best the protection is to take both. But this has not been tested to my knowledge.

I plan to ask my GP about having a stash just in case. Metformin is a common diabetes med to used reduce A1C.

[Solyesh]

Metformin is a very interesting drug. I had actually asked my GP about it after reading studies on its potential effects at repairing cell damage (or slowing cell death). He said the jury was still out on that and given some of MT's less popular side effects (especially gastrointestinal) that he would wait to prescribe until additional info is analyzed...then out of the blue he called me to ask if I had seen the studies on MT's potential to inhibit JAK2 activity. He pointed me to an NIH study which concluded - "In conclusion, metformin exerts multitarget antileukemia activity in MPN: downregulation of JAK2/STAT signaling and mitochondrial activity." He also sent to my MPN specialist and I'll discuss it with him at my next appointment.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl....

From another study: Recently, the phase II study Fibromet failed to demonstrate effect of MT in reversing bone marrow fibrosis in myelofibrosis. However, significant down regulation of the JAK-STAT-pathway and cytokine production were demonstrated (Campos et al, 2021).

CONCLUSION In this study we found an inverse association between MT use and risk of MPNs indicating a potential protective effect of MT on the development of MPNs. The protective effect was most pronounced for long-term use, older age (≥60 years) and for polycythemia vera and essential thrombocythemia. Whether this effect is causal should be determined interventional studies.

[MPort in reply to Solyesh]

That's is very interesting. Thanks for sharing and please keep us updated.

[EPguy in reply to Solyesh]

I had seen some mention but this is nicely specific.

My focus on MT has been for potential to reduce mouth rot with Sjogren's. But these other features are popping up, thanks for the great link.

One of the prior refs has "In conclusion, metformin displayed a remarkable anti-leukemic activity" but this study is specific to MPN.

"Interestingly, combined treatment (10 mM metformin plus 300 nM ruxolitinib) completely inhibited colony formation (Fig. 2c)."

I chose the figure 2c here, among many, for its visual impact. MT worked quite well and about as well as Rux for this measure. But this was not true for everything they measured.

See next reply for another nice visual.

"Notably, a modest effect was observed with the combination of metformin and ruxolitinib, suggesting that both drugs may share some similarities in mechanisms of action in these cells."

The MT dose used "represents a pharmacological dose lower than that used for type II diabetes treatment" and using the standard dose could add effectiveness.

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You note a 2nd study, this seems to be a real clinical study that would be neat to review.

MT-Rux

[EPguy in reply to Solyesh]

Another visual from the study. This tumor comprising Ba/F3 cells is supposed to represent Jak2 allele burden. Large reductions on MT.

Jak2617