Metformin use significantly reduces risk of joint replacement in people with type 2 diabetes

Osteoarthritis is a common chronic condition that usually causes joint pain and can be severe enough to require knee and hip replacements. In the United States, the number of total knee replacement (TKR) and total hip replacement (THR) surgeries is estimated to reach 572 000 per year by 2030. No medications are currently known to prevent or reverse osteoarthritis.

A team of researchers from China, Taiwan and Australia aimed to determine whether metformin use was associated with a lower risk of TKR or THR as evidence to date has been sparse and inconclusive. They analyzed data from 69 706 participants who received a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes in Taiwan between 2000 and 2012 and compared the risk of TKR and/or THR between people taking metformin and those not taking metformin. The mean age was 63 years and half were women. About 90% of total joint replacements were related to osteoarthritis.

"We found that metformin use in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus was associated with a significantly reduced risk of joint replacement, suggesting a potential therapeutic effect of metformin in patients with osteoarthritis," writes Dr. Changhai Ding, Clinical Research Center of Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, with coauthors.

My next question would be whether people on Metformin have lower joint replacement rates than non-diabetics (who obviously would not be on Metformin).

If that’s the case, then Metformin is providing a protection not otherwise available to anyone, and leads to the possibility of taking the drug, perhaps in much lower doses for non-diabetics, to prevent degradation of joints.

Probably a long-shot, but since no one knows how drugs work, anything is possible.

I’d say that T2 diabetics tend to be far heavier (on average) which causes the joint damage (especially the knees) vs the diabetes itself. Metformin usage tends to lower weight but I don’t think it would be weightloss alone that would be the benefit.

Otherwise this would be helpful towards T1 diabetics too.

That's good to know. I have been on Metformin for fifteen years. My brother has had both hips replaced and he has been on Metformin for years too, but he always weighted more then I did through the years. About twenty months ago I threw out my hip when exercising in a crazy way.

I had been using a treadmill at the maximum degree of incline at about four miles per hour but my treadmill finally gave up the ghost.

I ordered a new Bowflex Max 10 trainer but it had a long backlog. While I waited, I started running in a figure eight around my basement but my track had a sharp turn that I took too hard and there went my hip. I re-injured my broken ankle from the 1980's at the same moment.

I could still walk so I tried to tough it out.

I ordered a year and a half of Puritan's Pride Hydrolyzed Collagen 1000 mg and took eight pills a day. I knew it was the real thing because it tasted like a cow horn. My wife looked at me funny and asked how I knew what a cow horn tastes like?

Well, when we were kids, somebody always had a horn made from a cow's horn and they were always passed around for a turn. When the spittle and breath goes through a cow horn horn from blowing through it so much, you can't help but taste it.

Those Collagen pills were 5/8ths of an inch long, I took 8 a day and they tasted like the cow's horn horns of my youth. It's not very pleasant.

I cannot say I am 100% better but I am three months from Seventy so how would I really know? Still, it's good to know I have my Metformin on my side.

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