Effects of metformin versus placebo on vitamin B12 metabolism in non-diabetic breast cancer patients in CCTG MA.32.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The CCTG/MA.32 trial investigates the effects of metformin vs placebo on breast cancer (BC) outcomes in non-diabetic high-risk BC patients.

Who Took Part

The study group was 492 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) group a baseline to be compared against.

VitB12 was analyzed centrally in baseline and 6-month fasting plasma.

Statistical analyses used Spearman's rank correlation coefficients and Wilcoxon signed-rank test for continuous variables and Chi-square test for categorical variables.

What Was Measured

The CCTG/MA.32 trial investigates the effects of metformin vs placebo on breast cancer (BC) outcomes in non-diabetic high-risk BC patients.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Antineoplastic Agents, Breast Neoplasms, Homocysteine, Metformin, Methylmalonic Acid and Vitamin B 12.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Anemia, Breast cancer, Megaloblastic anemia and Vitamin B12.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 492 patients.

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

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (Breast cancer research and treatment), a journal based in Netherlands.

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