Abstract

The anti-proliferative role of metformin in non-diabetic female patients with breast cancer; systematic review and meta analysis of randomized control trials

Author(s): Hanan Al-Ghalib

Background: Usage of metformin in non-diabetic women with breast cancer is neither a common approach nor a conventional treatment modality. Metformin and chemotherapy have a high phenotypic variation in complete response rate among diabetic patients with different types of cancer. Although the results on salvage therapy were contradictory, we carried out a meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of the addition of metformin to conventional treatment on the prognosis in non-diabetic women who have breast cancer.

Methods: A consummate literature search of Pub- Med, EMBASE, grey literature, and web of science was conducted until 7th of March 2020. A total of 11 randomized control trials were included in this metaanalysis. The search was limited to English language and human studies, including references related to metformin, breast cancer, and prognosis. We performed the meta-analysis using a random and fixedeffects model, with hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) as effect measures.

Results: A total of 11 randomized control trials consisting of 1681 breast cancer patients without diabetes including 841 ones which received.