Some anti-diabetic drugs could (even) delay Parkinson’s – breaking latest news

I anti-diabetic drugs they can be too neuro-protective and could they represent a new weapon against Parkinson’s disease? A new study just published on the Journal of Neurology and conducted by a group of Italian researchers has investigated this path on the basis of other research that has led to positive results and carried out on animal models.

In summary it emerged that patients taking antidiabetic drugs to control the disease they develop Parkinson’s disease on average six years later than those not taking the same medicines based on metformin, a drug used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. The research was conducted by the Parkinson and parkinsonism Center of ASST Gaetano Pini-CTO Milan with the contribution of the Grisons Foundation for Parkinson’s disease. It is a retrospective observational work on the data of a huge computerized folder.

I study

The study involved 8,120 patients with Parkinson’s disease followed at the ASST Gaetano Pini between 2010 and 2019. The researchers observed that the 413 patients with diabetes who took metformin for this pathology experienced the neurodegenerative disease on average after the age of 66. In the 7,707 non-diabetic people, however, Parkinson’s developed shortly after the age of 60. The fact that Parkinson’s is pushed forward by about 6 years is of enormous importance – he comments Gianni Pezzoli, president of the Grisons Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease, which supported the research, and of the Italian Parkinsonian Association. – and this is because Parkinson’s disease on average begins at age 60 and lasts about 18 years. If we “move forward” the pathology by removing the last six years, we find ourselves having to manage the first 12 years of Parkinson’s in a moderately simpler way. The drug proved to be partially protective. The data collected are very significant and prompt us to investigate not only the preventive capacity of anti-diabetic drugs but also their role in reducing the progression of Parkinson’s when it has already arisen. We believe we have laid an important building block for research even if further studies will be needed in order to provide clear therapeutic indications.

Early symptoms of Parkinson’s

To date there is no marker sure that indicates who in the future will develop Parkinson’s and this is an area of ​​research in great turmoil. For this reason it is unthinkable to suggest the use of metformin in a broader way adds Pezzoli, first signatory of the study. However, one could reason about the administration of metformin also in non-diabetic people who are predisposed to develop Parkinson’s due to familiarity or the appearance of characteristic early symptoms such assudden nocturnal restlessness, loss of smell or even more general signs such as constipation and mild depression.

What is metformin

Metformin is a drug on the market since the early 1960s, now off-patent and very cheap (3 euros a month). The medicine, extensively studied, can also be used by non-diabetic subjects because does not lower blood sugar but it uses other mechanisms, specifies Pezzoli. Other antidiabetic drugs are being studied, the so-called glucagon substitutes, already on the market for diabetes, and which could also slow down the degenerative disease but which cost 300 euros a month.