Unexpected Drug May Lower COVID Death Risk? [Diabetic Must-Read!]

Some diseases don’t discriminate.

That’s not the case with COVID-19.

Certain people are much more likely to become infected with COVID-19—and are also much more likely to die.

For example, there is a higher mortality rate in people over 80 years old, people with cardiovascular disease, and in African Americans.

But type 2 diabetics are hit especially hard—with a death rate 7.3 percent higher than the general population.

But there’s good news too…

Because scientists have discovered an unexpeccommon, inexpensive drug that may help protect type 2 diabetics from dying from COVID-19.

For a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers studied 604 patients who had tested positive for COVID-19.

Overall mortality among those who tested positive was 11 percent.

However, 67 percent of those deaths occurred in people with type 2 diabetes.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the researchers also evaluated two common diabetes treatments—metformin and insulin—to see if taking them had any impact on mortality.

Insulin didn’t.

But take a look at the results for metformin…

Taking metformin before contracting COVID-19 reduced the odds of dying by 62 percent!

This potential protective effect remained even after considering other factors, like age, race, sex, etc.

If you already have type 2 diabetes, that’s not likely to change anytime soon (although it IS possible to reverse your diabetes. You can read about that here).

But you CAN start taking metformin. It works by helping to restore your body’s response to insulin.

It can help manage your diabetes—and as this study showed, it could help keep you safe if you contract COVID-19.

That’s a win-win if I ever heard one.