Survival Benefit of Metformin Use for Pancreatic Cancer Patients Who Underwent Pancreatectomy: Results From a Meta-Analysis

Objective: To evaluate the survival benefit of metformin use for pancreatic cancer (PC) patients underwent pancreatectomy. Methods: Databases including EMBASE, PubMed, the Cochrane Library were searched to identify studies relevant to the outcomes on the survival benefit of metformin use for the PC patients who underwent pancreatectomy until June 30, 2019. STATA 12.0 software was used to performed the meta-analysis. Results: 12 studies involving 35,346 PC patients were included in this meta-analysis. With a random-model, there are significant differences in overall survival (HR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.77–0.94, P = 0.002) between PC patients who were treated with metformin underwent pancreatectomy and those who underwent pancreatectomy without metformin use. Subgroup analyses showed Caucasians (HR = 0.903, 95% CI = 0.825–0.940, P = 0.008) and Asian (HR = 0.691, 95% CI = 0.588–0.813, P = 0.001) PC patients have a significantly reduced risk of death for metformin users. Subgroup analyses also showed a survival benefit for PC patients at stage I-II (HR = 0.762, 95% CI = 0.677–0.858, P = 0.0001). Conclusions: Metformin use is related to a better survival benefit for PC patients who underwent pancreatectomy, which would be a potential drug for the treatment of PC.