Association Between Metformin Initiation and Incident Dementia Among African American and White Veterans Health Administration Patients
Abstract
PURPOSE: African American patients are more likely to experience cognitive decline after type 2 diabetes mellitus onset than white patients. Metformin use has been associated with a lower risk of dementia compared with sulfonylureas. Evidence for whether this association differs by race is sparse.
METHODS: Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical record data were obtained for 73,761 African American and white patients aged ≥50 years who used the VHA from fiscal years 2000 to 2015. Patients were free of dementia and diabetes medications during fiscal years 2000 and 2001 and subsequently initiated metformin or sulfonylurea monotherapy. For race and age subgroups, Cox proportional hazards models using propensity scores and inverse probability of treatment weighting to control for confounding were computed to measure the association between metformin vs sulfonylurea initiation and incident dementia.
RESULTS: After controlling for confounding, among patients aged ≥50 years, metformin vs sulfonylurea use was associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia in African American patients (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.6-0.89) but not white patients (HR = 0.96; 95% CI, 0.9-1.03). The strongest magnitude of association between metformin and dementia was observed among African American patients aged 50 to 64 years (HR = 0.6; 95% CI, 0.45-0.81). Among those aged 65 to 74 years, metformin was significantly associated with lower risk of dementia in both races. Metformin was…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a cohort study, done in people. Its evidence level is 3 of 5 (Moderate · trial / cohort / secondary analysis). Trials without a large randomized design, cohorts and secondary analyses give moderate evidence.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Metformin as an adjuvant in breast cancer treatment
- Metformin Lysosomal Targeting: A Novel Aspect to Be Investigated for Metformin Repurposing in Neurodegenerative Diseases?
- Aberrant HSF1 signaling activation underlies metformin amelioration of myocardial infarction in mice
- Metformin induces ZFP36 by mTORC1 inhibition in cervical cancer-derived cell lines
- Protein Interaction Network for Identifying Vascular Response of Metformin (Oral Antidiabetic)
- Preventing Long COVID With Metformin
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.