Does this mean we need to put every woman suffering from ovarian cancer on metformin? Absolutely not! You can't make a presumption of cause & effect based upon a case-control study. Furthermore, it would definitely be a case of jumping the gun to consider therapeutic changes based upon a study of just 72 cases (ovarian cancer w/diabetes on metformin) compared to 143 controls (ovarian cancer w/o diabetes or metformin). A further subset analysis was performed on 61 cases of epithelial ovarian cancer w/diabetes on metformin compared to 178 controls (epithelial ovarian cancer w/o diabetes or metformin).
Where does this leave us? Obviously, the 1st question to address is whether this is a fluke or a trend. If you read the article , you'll see that this is definitely not a fluke. The authors looked for this result based upon a prior study published in April 2005 in the British Medical Journal that took notice of new findings in cellular signaling pathways. Bottom line: there's definitely some science behind this "new" finding.
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