Metformin vs insulin in the management of gestational diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of metformin compared with insulin in achieving glycemic control and investigate the maternal and neonatal outcomes in gestational diabetes mellitus.

Methods: We searched four electronic databases from inception through December 2012. Terms for Gestational diabetes/gestational diabetes mellitus/diabetes pregnancy AND/OR Metformin/hypoglycemic drugs/Hypoglycemic Agents/Antidiabetic Medications were used in the search. Two investigators independently reviewed titles and abstracts, performed data abstraction on full articles, and assessed study quality. Meanwhile, manual search of other resources and the search on Google Scholar were also carried out to identify more related articles .Rev Man 5.0 was used to analyze the data.

Results: Six randomized clinical trials involving 1420 subjects were included. The current limited data suggested that using metformin in gestational diabetes subjects did not significantly increase adverse maternal outcomes and neonatal outcomes, also with less weight gain and neonatal hypoglycemia, but a higher incidence of premature birth.

Conclusions: Metformin will not increase the incidence of adverse maternal outcomes and neonatal outcomes.