Metformin Associated With Lower Cancer Mortality in Type 2 Diabetes: ZODIAC-16

Original Research

Metformin Associated With Lower Cancer Mortality in Type 2 Diabetes

¹Internal Medicine, Isala Clinics, Zwolle, the Netherlands;
²Diabetes Centre, Isala Clinics, Zwolle, the Netherlands;
³Medical Research Group, Langerhans, Zwolle, the Netherlands;
⁴General Practice, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands;
⁵Internal Medicine, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

Diabetes Care 2010 Feb; 33(2): 322-326. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc09-1380

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Figure 1
Cumulative survival curve for cancer mortality.
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Figure 2
Cumulative survival curve for total mortality.
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Figure 3
Cumulative survival for cardiovascular mortality.
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Figure 4
Cumulative survival for non-cancer and non-cardiovascular (CV) (all other causes) mortality.

Table 1

Baseline characteristics

Characteristics	Total	Metformin users	No metformin use
n	1,353	289	1,064
Age (years)	67.8 ± 11.7	67.3 ± 10.6	68.0 ± 12.0
Female sex (%)	57.6	61.2	56.5
Diabetes duration (years)	6.0 (3–11)	4.9 (3–11)	7.1 (4–12)
Smoking (%)	18.6	19.2	18.4
BMI (kg/m²)	28.9 ± 4.8	29.6 ± 5.1	28.8 ± 4.6*
Systolic blood pressure (mmHg)	153.0 ± 25.2	154.3 ± 24.9	153.6 ± 25.3
A1C (%)	7.5 ± 1.2	7.7 ± 1.1	7.4 ± 1.3*
eGFR (ml/min per 1.73 m²)	73.9 ± 28.1	76.9 ± 30.0	73.0 ± 27.6†
Total cholesterol–to–HDL ratio	5.2 ± 1.6	5.3 ± 1.6	5.1 ± 1.5
Albumin-to-creatinine ratio	2.2 (1.0–7.2)	2.6 (1.1–9.4)	2.1 (1.0–6.8)
Macrovascular complications (%)	32.7	35.3	32.1
Insulin use (%)	16.5	5.9	19.3‡
Sulfonylurea use (%)	55.0	15.9	65.8‡
Diet only (%)	13.0

Data are means ± SD, median (interquartile range) for nonnormally distributed data, or %.
↵*P < 0.01;
↵†P < 0.05;
↵‡P < 0.001, two-sided parametric test (Student t) and nonparametric test (Mann-Whitney U) as appropriate. eGFR, estimated glomerular filtration rate.