Lab animals deficient in vitamin D crave and become dependent on opioids, which is curbed when normal levels of the vitamin are restored. Human health records indicate that people with low vitamin D are more likely to use and misuse opioids. Study results suggest a potential role for vitamin D supplementation in fighting opioid addiction.
Written by James Kingsland on April 19, 2021 Fact checked by Anna Guildford, Ph.D.
New research has tested the benefits of a diabetes drug in combination with chemotherapy against skin cancer. SUNG KWON/Getty Images
In the 1950s, doctors prescribed a drug called phenformin to people with type 2 diabetes. A safer alternative, metformin, is now in more common use.
Both drugs have shown promise as anticancer agents in laboratory studies, but phenformin appears to be more potent.
Researchers are now testing a combination of phenformin and chemotherapy drugs in people with a type of skin cancer.
Galega officinalis) to people with excessive urination, or polyuria, which we now know to be a symptom of type 2 diabetes.
Anti-diabetic drug phenformin may prompt stronger cancer-fighting activities
The anti-diabetic drug phenformin may prompt stronger cancer-fighting activities than its sister compound metformin, a finding that could have major implications for current and future clinical trials investigating both agents for their anti-cancer potential, according to researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
In a review article in
Trends in Cancer, the team presented evidence that immunotherapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (which enable T cells to attack and kill cancer cells) in combination with phenformin may also be a promising way to repurpose this diabetic drug as an anti-cancer agent.
Metformin was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995 and has since become the most prescribed drug for diabetes in the United States.
Diabetes Drug Holds Promise in Combatting Cancer by Angela Mohan on April 15, 2021 at 3:43 PM
In a review article in
Trends in Cancer, the team presented evidence that immunotherapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (which enable T cells to attack and kill cancer cells) in combination with phenformin may also be a promising way to repurpose this diabetic drug as an anti-cancer agent.
Metformin was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995 and has since become the most prescribed drug for diabetes in the United States.
Phenformin was started prescribing for type 2 diabetes in the 1950s but was withdrawn from use in the late 1970s due lactic acidosis.