Trial reportAging2019
Metformin induces a fasting- and antifolate-mimicking modification of systemic host metabolism in breast cancer patients.
Trial report in Aging, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Metformin for the treatment of breast cancer: a scoping review of randomized clinical trials.BMC cancer · 2025Article
- Environmental factors capable of broadly interfering with nutritional lifespan extension paradigms.iScience · 2025Article
- Intermittent fasting reduces glaucomatous damage in an HSP27 autoimmune mouse model.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Article
- Clinical significance of lipid pathway-targeted therapy in breast cancer.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Targeting ketone body metabolism to treat fatty liver disease.Journal of pharmacy & pharmaceutical sciences : a publication of the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Societe canadienne des sciences pharmaceutiques · 2024Review
- Review
- Article
- Three Tiers to biological escape velocity: The quest to outwit aging.Aging medicine (Milton (N.S.W)) · 2022Review
- Divergent Metabolic Effects of Metformin Merge to Enhance Eicosapentaenoic Acid Metabolism and Inhibit Ovarian Cancer In Vivo.Cancers · 2022Article
- The intervention on aging system: A classification model, the requirement for five novel categories.Aging medicine (Milton (N.S.W)) · 2022Review
- RETRACTED: Metformin and Breast Cancer: Where Are We Now?International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Article
- Interaction between Metformin, Folate and Vitamin BInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Metabolic Rewiring in Radiation Oncology Toward Improving the Therapeutic Ratio.Frontiers in oncology · 2021Review
- Tumor Cell-Intrinsic Immunometabolism and Precision Nutrition in Cancer Immunotherapy.Cancers · 2020Article
- Article
- Metformin: Sentinel of the Epigenetic Landscapes That Underlie Cell Fate and Identity.Biomolecules · 2020Review
- Metformin: Targeting the Metabolo-Epigenetic Link in Cancer Biology.Frontiers in oncology · 2020Review
- Neoadjuvant Metformin Added to Systemic Therapy Decreases the Proliferative Capacity of Residual Breast Cancer.Journal of clinical medicine · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
25 authors at 16 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Certain dietary interventions might improve the therapeutic index of cancer treatments. An alternative to the "drug plus diet" approach is the pharmacological reproduction of the metabolic traits of such diets. Here we explored the impact of adding metformin to an established therapeutic regimen on the systemic host metabolism of cancer patients. A panel of 11 serum metabolites including markers of mitochondrial function and intermediates/products of folate-dependent one-carbon metabolism were measured in paired baseline and post-treatment sera obtained from HER2-positive breast cancer patients randomized to receive either metformin combined with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and trastuzumab or an equivalent regimen without metformin. Metabolite profiles revealed a significant increase of the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate and of the TCA intermediate α-ketoglutarate in the metformin-containing arm. A significant relationship was found between the follow-up levels of homocysteine and the ability of treatment arms to achieve a pathological complete response (pCR). In the metformin-containing arm, patients with significant elevations of homocysteine tended to have a higher probability of pCR. The addition of metformin to an established anti-cancer therapeutic regimen causes a fasting-mimicking modification of systemic host metabolism. Circulating homocysteine could be explored as a clinical pharmacodynamic biomarker linking the antifolate-like activity of metformin and biological tumor response.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.