Results from the MET-PREVENT sarcopenia trial now published

A clinical trial led by the AGE Research Group has been published in the prestigious Lancet Healthy Longevity journal. The MET-PREVENT trial, which enrolled 72 older people from Newcastle and Gateshead with sarcopenia, tested the effect of metformin, a medicine commonly used to treat diabetes. Few clinical trials have been conducted for sarcopenia, and conducting such trials has traditionally been challenging.

The MET-PREVENT trial, funded by the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre and conducted in collaboration with Newcastle Clinical Trials Unit and colleagues in Leeds and London, compared the effect of 4 months of metformin against placebo. The trial was designed in partnership with older people living with sarcopenia, and many of the study visits were done in participants own homes, making it much easier for this older group of patients to take part. As a result, 97% of participants completed the trial – much higher than is usually the case for such trials. Metformin did not improve muscle strength, walking speed, activities of daily living or quality of life compared to placebo – but it did cause many more side-effects than the placebo tablets.

Professor Miles Witham, who led the trial, said: “Clinical trials are often not designed to enable older people with muscle weakness or frailty to take part, and people often struggle to complete these trials. Even though metformin did not have the benefits we had hoped for, we have shown that by working with older people, we can design better trials for this under-served group of patients.

This is an important result – we have shown we can give more older people the opportunity to be included in research, and it also shows that metformin might not be the “wonder drug” for the ageing process that some researchers had hoped.”

The paper can be found here: DOI: 10.1016/j.lanhl.2025.100695

The podcast that accompanies the paper can be found here: https://www.thelancet.com/multimedia/podcasts/in-conversation-with/lanhl

A report on the feedback events for participants can be found here: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/ageresearchgroup/news/patientandpublicinvolvementandengagementcasestudy.html

Last modified: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 16:44:57 BST