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Five-Cent Diabetes Pill From 1958 May Be New Cancer Drug
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoOk, now to protect my health I should be taking this drug (Metformin?), taking aspirin, drinking a glass of wine, eating blueberries... what have I missed? Maybe a pill that combines all that? There's an actionable startup idea!
- WiseWeasel 14y agoGullibitor, for people who don't question all those newspaper headlines about the latest wonder drug breakthrough. Though I will admit blueberry wine sounds like a good idea.
- gwern 14y agoRemember the aspirin has to be low-dose...
- dmix 14y agoIt's not a good idea to take it preemptively. Only take low-dose aspirin if you've been diagnosed with heart problems or likely to have problems in the future.
- sliverstorm 14y agoBut the Internet told me it was a good idea!
- tptacek 14y agoYou're only going to take metformin if you have risk factors and/or metabolic syndrome/diabetes. Metformin has side effects. It's not as simple as aspirin. (I'm not on it, but my wife was after our first kid was born and there was a concern about gestational diabetes).
- pw 14y agoI might be wrong, but my understanding is that metformin is remarkably safe. I know you shouldn't take it if you have kidney or liver disease, and you mentioned the risk for women who are or might become pregnant, but except in those cases, I think gastrointestinal upset is about the only side-effect.
- rogerbinns 14y agoThe gastrointestinal upset is very prevalent, especially when people start taking it. It is also a good idea to avoid alcohol completely while on metformin. Metformin isn't a miracle cure - it helps reduce sugar absorption and generation by a (little) bit. Good old fashioned diet and exercise are far better, with metformin just taking the edge off. The best way of affecting long term public health is to address diet and exercise rather than giving everyone 5c pills.
- rogerbinns 14y agoAlso not mentioned is that metformin can severely reduce B12 uptake. Lack of B12 can result in nervous system issues, and is very similar to neuropathy. You have a store of several years of B12 so it can take quite a while before depletion sets in.
- aptimpropriety 14y agoFWIW, the dreams of the 'end-all pill' fall short for a wide variety of reasons - one of the major ones being volume of ingredients necessary. For many recommended doses of vitamins / minerals, you simply need more than the total weight of those ingredients than can fit into a pill. The magnitude of this depends upon which supplementation schools of thought you believe in, but there is a limit to how much you can cram into a pill you can swallow.
- pyre 14y agoFry: I can't swallow that. Prof. Farnsworth: Good news! It's a suppository!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tzs 14y agoCool. I'm on metformin (the drug from the article) and Actos for my American Diabetes[1]. Maybe metformin's anti-cancer properties will counter Actos' known pro-cancer properties! :-) [1] By American Diabetes I mean diabetes due to being overweight. A few years ago, I changed my eating habits, got down to merely chubby, and all traces of diabetes went away. Eventually, changes in work threw my schedule into disarray, I stopped making time to go home and cook and reverted to too much fast food, much of the weight came back, and so did the diabetes.
- mahyarm 14y agoSubway salads & In&Out protein style or McDonalds burgers & milkshakes style fast food?
- tzs 14y agoA mix, although shakes are rare. It's the tempting add-ons (e.g., cookies at Subway) and the late night "I didn't stock any good snacks at home to avoid temptation, and so I end up going to the convenience store" runs that are the killers.
- mahyarm 14y agoStock better snacks, double your orders of healthier food?
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y agoHmm. So the way I read this: We have an old drug that helps diabetes to treat cancer.. The drug costs $.05/pill, for diabetes. It will be called "Nocan", and feature a $24/pill cost, due to a new patent being granted. * *Just like Eli Lilly with PMS-PMDD and name change of Prozac to Sarafem. All you need do is bribe FDA for new "disease" name, and you have another 17 yr patent.
- danielweber 14y agoOrphan Drug Law. If you want someone to do all the work to actually prove it works, which is incredibly expensive, they must be compensated in some way. There are certainly other ways to compensate people who do this research, but this way maps pretty well to our current laws.
- huxley 14y agoSome drugs are very expensive, but most orphan drugs aren't. Average costs are between $25-60 million per drug. http://www.palgrave-journals.com/biosoc/journal/v6/n1/full/biosoc201040a.html http://www.palgrave-journals.com/biosoc/journal/v6/n1/full/b... http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/rnd/evidenceregardingrnd.pdf http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/rnd/evidenceregardingrnd.pdf
- tptacek 14y agoHuh? How do you patent metformin? It's an extremely widely prescribed drug.
- stephengillie 14y agoYou don't. You patent "Nocan", a drug with an extremely similar (most would say "identical") chemical structure. Metformin is a diabetes medication, while Nocan will be a cancer drug, so they're totally different. The diseases aren't even handled by the same medical specialists. ;)
- tptacek 14y ago
- rms 14y agoI've been taking this on and off before meals as an anti-aging drug. Glad it's getting some mainstream coverage. It's quite possible just about everyone should be taking it, certainly everyone on a typical American high-carb diet.
- sliverstorm 14y agoIt's quite possible just about everyone should be taking it Statements like this instantly set off my alarm bells. A drug that everybody should be routinely taking? Call me skeptical.
- jrockway 14y agoWe all take powerful drugs every day: it's just that we mostly get them from food. (Example: Vitamin C and scurvy.)
- sliverstorm 14y agoBy that argument, glucose is also a drug. There's a key difference between drugs and foods. For example, Vitamin C is required for synthesis, metabolism, and enzyme operation [1]. Caffeine simply enhances alertness. Your body will cease to function correctly without Vitamin C; not so without Caffeine (unless you are fostering a dependance) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Physiological_function_in_mammals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Physiological_functio...
- rms 14y agoSure, glucose is a drug. There's a lot of overlap between foods, supplements, and drugs, and for the most part the distinction is created by bureaucrats at the FDA. My favorite example of something that is simultaneously a food, drug, and supplement is the Seville orange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_orange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_orange The bitter orange is delicious with stronger orange flavor than a normal orange, particularly in the peel. Most commercially used "natural orange flavor" is derived from bitter orange peels. The bitter orange contains a powerful set of ephedra-like substances, which are quite powerfully mind altering. A single bitter orange is actually uncomfortably stimulating for most people, in the sense that people have enough of a sense for this kind of thing that they stop eating before they consume an entire orange. But even though sour orange extract is regulated as a supplement, it works as a powerful drug, and an unusually dangerous one at that. It still grows on trees and is very delicious and perhaps available blended in a $15 cocktail near you. Most bartenders don't realize they are adding a stimulant to a drink when they add Seville orange.
- tocomment 14y agoHow does this drug work? Does it reduce your blood sugar somehow? Would it be useful for weight loss?
- paulsutter 14y agoAre they saying that controlling blood sugar reduces cancer, or that metformin controls blood sugar -and- reduces cancer through some other mechanism? There is enormous evidence of health problems caused by high blood sugar. If this applies to cancer too, the actionable plan is to start measuring one's own blood sugar (either daily or with an implant which can do it continuously), and learn to control it. I'm ready to try this myself. Nothing beats direct measurement / "what gets measures gets fixed".