Metformin

The Unauthorized Biography

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Metformin gets married

Metformin works well with other medicines, giving rise to precious few drug interactions. More than that, combinations of metformin and other glucose-lowering drugs have been shown to be significantly more potent than either medicine alone — and sometimes even more potent than the sum of each drug’s individual effect. Since getting people to take multiple prescription drugs can be a challenge, metformin has been married to a number of other diabetes medicines to create “polypills,” capsules or tablets with more than one drug in them.

Metformin has been combined in diabetes polypills with sulfonylureas (in Metaglip, Glucovance, Amaryl M), thiazolidinediones (ACTOplus met), DPP-4 inhibitors (Janumet, Galvumet, Kombiglyze XR), and SGLT2 inhibitors (Invokamet, Xigduo XR, Synjardy). Globally, there are now more than 20 polypills containing metformin, and the list is likely to continue to grow as new diabetes drugs are developed.

Click on page 7, below, learn about the descendants of metformin.

Originally Published June 4, 2013

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