Vitamin B12 screening in metformin-treated diabetics in primary care: were elderly patients less likely to be tested?

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Their objective was to examine the current practice and clinical determinants of vitamin B12 testing in metformin treated T2DM patients.

Why It Was Studied

Low serum B12 level is a common occurrence in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) treated with metformin.

Data were collected from health maintenance organization patients, and consisted of T2DM patients who were newly prescribed metformin from 2008 to 2013.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 5131 patients were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Because people in this Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

What Was Measured

Low serum B12 level is a common occurrence in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) treated with metformin.

Patients were randomly divided into two subgroups: referred for a vitamin B12 blood test, and did not receive a referral.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Age Factors, Comorbidity, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Glycated Hemoglobin, Healthcare Disparities, Hypoglycemic Agents and Israel.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Metformin-treated patients, Primary care physician and Vitamin B12 screening.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 5131 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

The publication is from 2017 (Aging clinical and experimental research), a journal based in Germany.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page, all human trials.