Metformin reduces the relapse rate of tuberculosis patients with diabetes mellitus: experiences from 3-year follow-up

• Published in: European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases Vol. 37; no. 7; pp. 1259 - 1263
• Main Authors: Ma, Y., Pang, Y., Shu, W., Liu, Y.-H., Ge, Q.-P., Du, J., Li, L., Gao, W.-W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-07-2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Antidiabetics; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Demographics; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Internal Medicine; Medical Microbiology; Metformin; Original Article; Patients; Statistical tests; Tuberculosis; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Diabetes mellitus; Metformin
• ISSN: 0934-9723; 1435-4373
• DOI: 10.1007/s10096-018-3242-6

The role of metformin (MET) on treatment effect of diabetic tuberculosis (TB) patients has not been studied in China. Thus, we conducted a retrospective study to investigate whether MET exhibited more efficacy in combination with anti-TB regimens for diabetic TB patients. All patients recruited came from five tuberculosis control and prevention institutes from July 2009 to July 2016 and completed 3 years of follow-up. We used chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test to evaluate the demographic characteristics and the frequency of clinical outcome between MET and non-MET group. A total of 58 TB patients with diabetes mellitus (DM), of these 27.6% (16/58) patients in the MET group and 72.4% (42/58) patients in the non-MET group, there was no significant difference in blood glucose level between MET and non-MET group (
P
 = 0.494), in addition, there was a higher proportion of treatment success (93.8 vs. 71.4%) and culture conversions by the end of 2 months (87.5 vs. 71.4%) among MET group; the relapse rates of patients in MET and non-MET group were 6.3% (1/16) and 35.7% (15/42) through a 3-year follow-up (
P
 = 0.045). Our data revealed that the use of MET as a combination drug with existing regimen improved the success rate of anti-TB treatment and reduced the relapse rate in TB patients with DM.