Diabetes Drug Can Reduce the Risk of Cancer

Thu, 24 Nov 2011
Recent research has uncovered that an inexpensive drug for use in the treatment of type 2 diabetes can prevent several natural and man-made chemicals from encouraging breast cancer cell growth.

The South Korean study stresses that long-term use of the drug metformin for Type 2 diabetes can lower the risk of diabetes-related cancers like breast cancers.

Type 2 diabetics are more susceptible to various diabetes-related cancers, such as, liver, breast and pancreatic.

This research is novel in that up to now there was no evidence to demonstrate how metformin lowers the risk of these cancers .

The researchers grew miniature human breast tumours, or mammospheres, in culture dishes which activated a certain stem cell gene.

The mammospheres were exposed to natural oestrogen, which is known to stimulate growth in breast tumours, and man-made chemicals which are known to encourage tumour growth or the disruption of the endocrine system.

The researchers uncovered that oestrogen and the other chemicals triggered the growth of the mammospheres in size and numbers.

With the addition of the metformin the numbers and size of the mammospheres were significantly reduced.

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