Diabetes Drug Metformin Linked to Major Birth Defects

Metformin Linked to Birth Defects in Baby Boys

This week, a major study from Stanford University, the University of Southern Denmark, and Copenhagen University found that the diabetes drug, Metformin, likely causes birth defects. The study found that the children of male parents who were taking Metformin three months before conception were affected. The male offspring of those men were three times as likely to have a genital birth defect than the unexposed babies. The boys whose fathers took Metformin had a 1.4 times greater risk of birth defects than those whose fathers had not taken Metformin. The study found major birth defects in 3.3% of the more than 1.1 million babies studied, and 51.4% of those affected were boys. Of the 1,451 babies exposed to Metformin, 49.4% were male and the birth defect rate was 5.2%. The study also found that male babies born to men who took Metformin either before or after the three-month period prior to conception did not have increased rates of birth defects. Approximately 80 million prescriptions for Metformin were written in the United States each year since 2014.

Read the full study here.