Metformin is commonly prescribed during pregnancy in the management of type 2 and gestational diabetes. As its use has increased, so too has research into the long-term effects of antenatal exposure on childhood outcomes. This presentation will review the current evidence on the impact of in-utero metformin on offspring anthropometrics and development, and present findings from a recent population-level analysis from our research team at the University of Melbourne.
This study included all singleton births between 2009 and 2020 from Victoria with linked birth and developmental outcome data, sourced from the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). The AEDC is a national assessment completed during the first year of fulltime school (ages 4-6 years), assessing skills across five developmental domains, with children scoring <10th centile in two or more domains considered developmentally vulnerable.
Following adjustment for confounders, in our cohort of 177,409 children, metformin was not associated with developmental vulnerability (adjusted relative risk (aRR) 0.97 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74, 1.29]), nor scoring <10th centile in any of the individual developmental domains.
Further research is still needed examining the impact of antenatal metformin use on offspring growth and cardiometabolic health, with current studies in this area conflicting.