Men who take metformin, a treatment for diabetes, three months before conceiving a baby are more likely to see their son have birth defects.
- Babies whose fathers were taking metformin usually had older parents of lower socioeconomic status, which may play a role in the occurrence of birth defects.
- Clinical guidance is needed to help couples planning pregnancy weigh the risks and benefits of paternal use of metformin versus other medications.
“Diabetes reduces sperm quality and occurs with increasing frequency during the reproductive years. Diabetes medications, such as metformin, have glucose-independent effects on the male reproductive system. Associations with malformations congenital births of the offspring are unknown”, said researchers from the University of Southern Denmark. To find out if the use of this treatment in diabetic men before the conception of a baby had an impact on their offspring, they carried out a study, including the results were published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
For the purposes of the work, the scientists searched national registries to analyze more than one million births between 1997 and 2016. They compared the risk of birth defects in babies based on paternal exposure to drugs against diabetes. “Offspring were considered at risk if their father had one or more prescriptions for an anti-diabetic drug during the development of fertilizing sperm, i.e. three months before conception”, can we read in the research. The study includes only children born to women under 35, who have no history of diabetes or hypertension, and men under 40.
Birth defects in children whose father took metformin before conception
Of the 1,116,779 children included, 3.3% had one or more major congenital anomalies. According to the results, children whose fathers were prescribed metformin during the year before the development of spermatozoa had high frequencies of birth defects. “Among metformin-exposed offspring, genital malformations, all in boys, were more common, while the proportion of male offspring was lower,” the authors said.
Men who used metformin before or after the three-month conception period did not have an increased risk of having a baby with birth defects. “Further research should confirm these findings and clarify causation,” concluded the researchers.
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