text_1: Metformin may lower lung cancer risk in diabetic nonsmokers
text_2: This release reports on an NIH-funded study to determine if the use of the drug metformin by diabetic patients may affect their risk of developing lung cancer. The overall answer is that it does not, but the release takes five paragraphs to say that. Instead, it focuses on a very small subset of patients who had never smoked and whose lung cancer risk appeared to be lower than never-smokers who didn’t take metformin. By trumpeting findings from that subgroup — and burying the main results of the study, which were negative — this release misrepresents the research findings and misleads its readers. We’d suggest that the findings of this study probably did not warrant the spotlight provided by a news release. But if a news release is to be issued, it should lead with the results for the primary outcome and give second billing to provocative but preliminary findings from subgroups. While not as egregious as another example of subgroup “spin” that we recently reported on, this news release will certainly give readers the impression that there’s something special about metformin when it comes to preventing cancer in people with diabetes, when that hasn’t been established with any certainty. Diabetes is a chronic disease requiring long-term use of drugs such as metformin. Some research suggests that metformin may decrease the risk of lung cancer — making the results of this study an important addition to the scientific literature. Unfortunately, the release focuses almost entirely on the results seen in a small subgroup of patients. As such, it doesn’t accurately reflect the totality of the research in question. Subgroup findings can be included, but should never supersede the main outcome.