Popular diabetes drug may be safe for patients with kidney disease
Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - 18:00
in Health & Medicine
The most popular treatment for type 2 diabetes, metformin, may be safer for patients with mild to moderate kidney disease than guidelines suggest, according to a new, systematic review of the literature. For 20 years, metformin has been used in the U.S. to lower blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes. Most experts consider it the best first agent to treat blood sugar increases in this disease. Despite its strong safety profile, the FDA has long recommended that metformin not be prescribed to patients with mild to moderate kidney disease due to the risk of lactic acidosis, a potentially serious condition. But those decades-old guidelines have recently been called into question.