Antihyperglycaemic therapies and cancer risk

Aims: This review is aimed at highlighting the potential mitogenic/tumour growth-promoting or antimitogenic/tumour growth-inhibiting effects of the main antihyperglycaemic drug classes. Methods: We review and discuss the most current studies evaluating the association between antidiabetic medications used in clinical practice and malignancies as described so far. Results: Metformin seems to be the only antidiabetic drug to exert protective effects both on monotherapy and also when combined with other oral antidiabetic drugs or insulins in several site-specific cancers. In contrast, several other drug classes may increase cancer risk. Some reason for concern remains regarding sulphonylureas and also the incretin-based therapies regarding pancreas and thyroid cancers and the sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors as well as pioglitazone regarding bladder cancer. The majority of meta-analyses suggest that there is no evidence for a causal relationship between insulin glargine and elevated cancer risk, although the studies have been controversially discussed. For -glucosidase inhibitors and glinides, neutral or only few data upon cancer risk exist. Conclusion: Although the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood, a potential risk of mitogenicity and tumour growth promotion cannot be excluded in case of several antidiabetic drug classes. However, more large-scale, randomized, well-designed clinical studies with especially long follow-up time periods are needed to get reliable answers to these safety issues.