This diabetes drug can reduce total Covid-19 deaths, hospitalisation by half, finds study

of hospitalisations and deaths due to Covid-19 by half. Metformin, a globally available diabetes drug, was used in the 1950s as an anti-viral called "Fluamine." Recently a research conducted in University of Minnesota has proved that people who started showing symptoms of Covid-19 and took this drug within the first four days, did not have to visit the hospital or ran the risk of death due to the virus.

The study has found that the drug affects the inflammation pathways. To put this in perspective, Covid-19 involves viral inflammation The study, published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared three medications that were considered promising -- fluvoxamine, an antidepressant that had shown strong results in previous studies, ivermectin, the object of much interest, and metformin.

The research team thought the combination of anti-inflammatory plus antiviral action was intriguing enough to test the drug. "This was really intriguing to us early on when we learned that people who take metformin were catching Covid-19 less and being hospitalised less," said Elaine Lissner, founder of California-based nonprofit Parsemus Foundation.

The study included 1,323 participants most at risk of serious outcomes -- adults over 30 and with body mass index (BMI) over 25 kilogrammes per square metre (kg/m2) -- to get lifesaving results more quickly.