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Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

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Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#111

Post by hypertele-Xii »

alwillis wrote: post #85
ako wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ruling class is forcing you to eat sugar, and you don't have the option to choose for healthier food?

From a big picture, socio-economic point of view, yes, the ruling class (Fortune 500 CEOs and elected officials they donate to and lobby) are essentially forcing the poor, the unaware, the average Joe to eat a diet full of high-fructose corn syrup and other carbohydrates, which happens to be produced by giant agricultural companies. Corn is a subsidized crop by the US Department of Agriculture—we pay farmers to grow…

> I've lived in food deserts and I can tell you getting healthy food can be quite an arduous task, especially if you rely on public transportation.

That's what food desert means. As in, no food. Therefore food must be imported. Therefore it's expensive. Sugar just happens to be a well-preserving food.

The solution is quite simple: Don't live in a food desert.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#112

Post by pxeger1 »

golem14 wrote: post #75

I don't get why this is called rare in the article. It's not called that in the actual study, so the article seems to do some editorializing: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4389 Looks like of the kids taken from dads taking metformin, .9% had a genital defect, which seems pretty high to me (defect in control is 0.24%). Granted, not as high as Thalidomide, but still, 9 in 1000 are not great odds.

I think it means the genital defect is normally rare, but is much more common in these kids?

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#113

Post by ovi256 »

lippel82 wrote: post #95
based69 wrote: post #78

Obese women’s offspring have double the risk of hypospadius, and women having babies after 40 have 4x the risk of hypospadius. Metformin is a drug that men are probably 100x more likely to be on at 45 vs 25. Therefore men on metformin are far more likely to be reproducing with older (and likely obese) women. I’m not saying this explains all the correlation, I’m just saying if the study doesn’t really make a good effo…

From the artcile: "The numbers were small — 13 metformin-exposed boys were born with genital defects. But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect. “The rate per se was surprisingly high,” Wensink says."

> after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status

The exact adjustments made can change the solidity of the finding into anything from "rock solid" to "complete trash". Seemingly solid studies are routinely trashed by third party method reviewers that the initial peer reviewers missed. So we'll know better when they get around to it.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#114

Post by ovi256 »

Lammy wrote: post #76
mensetmanusman wrote: post #28

It’s sad seeing the crazy downstream multigenerational damage that massive sugar consumption is causing as obesity rates reach 50%. Good luck future humanity.

Our leaders have been calling for a population decrease since around the time of the civil rights era, so maybe future-humanity gets a coincidental-but-desired outcome after all? https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=10 "The time has come to ask what level of population growth is good for the United States. There was a period when rapid growth made better sense ks we sought to settle a continent and bu…

Fringe leaders call for fringe positions all the time.

None of the authors of that paper were elected officials, and that view never became policy of any state.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#115

Post by carlmr »

lippel82 wrote: post #95
based69 wrote: post #78

Obese women’s offspring have double the risk of hypospadius, and women having babies after 40 have 4x the risk of hypospadius. Metformin is a drug that men are probably 100x more likely to be on at 45 vs 25. Therefore men on metformin are far more likely to be reproducing with older (and likely obese) women. I’m not saying this explains all the correlation, I’m just saying if the study doesn’t really make a good effo…

From the artcile: "The numbers were small — 13 metformin-exposed boys were born with genital defects. But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect. “The rate per se was surprisingly high,” Wensink says."

>But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect

If they didn't adjust for obesity, then it's really pointless to attribute this to the drug. Age and smoking status is not enough.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#116

Post by arvinsim »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #80
idorosen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a harmful stereotype to label obese people as lacking willpower as you have done. Many obese people don’t have the resources (time, money) or tools (nutrition understanding) to improve their situation. Many have metabolic or familial history of obesity which has both physical and psychological (normalization) impact on their ability to control their weight. The former can be helped with diet and/or medication,…

I would say it’s much more harmful to rationalize obesity as something that afflicts people according to their circumstances, rather than what it actually is, a direct outcome of a person’s intentional choices. It’s also quite harmful to dramatize the solutions out to be something unattainable to many people. They are attainable to all people. The healthiest diet I’ve ever eaten was also the cheapest diet I’ve ever e…

Nutrition and fitness are hardly a one-size-fits-all problem.

To take an example, my self, I am doing intermittent fasting and do moderate intensity exercise everyday for at least 30 minutes(gym, cycling, bouldering, etc). No matter what I do, I still have a muffin belly.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#117

Post by darawk »

lippel82 wrote: post #95
based69 wrote: post #78

Obese women’s offspring have double the risk of hypospadius, and women having babies after 40 have 4x the risk of hypospadius. Metformin is a drug that men are probably 100x more likely to be on at 45 vs 25. Therefore men on metformin are far more likely to be reproducing with older (and likely obese) women. I’m not saying this explains all the correlation, I’m just saying if the study doesn’t really make a good effo…

From the artcile: "The numbers were small — 13 metformin-exposed boys were born with genital defects. But after the researchers adjusted for factors including parental ages and maternal smoking status, they found a 3.39-fold rise in the odds of a genital defect. “The rate per se was surprisingly high,” Wensink says."

Adjusting for confounders on an n of 13 is statistically ridiculous.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#118

Post by naoqj »

Lammy wrote: post #76
mensetmanusman wrote: post #28

It’s sad seeing the crazy downstream multigenerational damage that massive sugar consumption is causing as obesity rates reach 50%. Good luck future humanity.

Our leaders have been calling for a population decrease since around the time of the civil rights era, so maybe future-humanity gets a coincidental-but-desired outcome after all? https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=10 "The time has come to ask what level of population growth is good for the United States. There was a period when rapid growth made better sense ks we sought to settle a continent and bu…

What leaders ask for is not necessarily what the population at large needs.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#119

Post by ImaCake »

Whatever your opinion on metformin this study is not really providing strong enough evidence to take seriously. No one should give it any attention, except the researchers who will try and do a better one next time and hopefully can prove/disprove this important hypothesis.

The authors have done a lot of tests here. If you do enough tests, even on null data, you eventually get false positive results. Nevermind the effects of confounding which are difficult to control for effectively in a non-random study.

The smallest p-value I could find was P = 0.012. Which is for "elevated birth defect fre- quencies among metformin-exposed offspring". This comes from a table with 6 rows of models with different OR values. Presumably they did have p-values testing if those ORs were statistically different from OR == 1. Which means one should adjust p-values by dividing the significance threshold by 6. So, 0.05/6 = 0.0083 which is smaller than 0.012. So I would be very hesitant to say that the evidence points to metformin really causing this. At least based on this study.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#120

Post by BoxOfRain »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #111
alwillis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a big picture, socio-economic point of view, yes, the ruling class (Fortune 500 CEOs and elected officials they donate to and lobby) are essentially forcing the poor, the unaware, the average Joe to eat a diet full of high-fructose corn syrup and other carbohydrates, which happens to be produced by giant agricultural companies. Corn is a subsidized crop by the US Department of Agriculture—we pay farmers to grow…

> I've lived in food deserts and I can tell you getting healthy food can be quite an arduous task, especially if you rely on public transportation. That's what food desert means. As in, no food. Therefore food must be imported. Therefore it's expensive. Sugar just happens to be a well-preserving food. The solution is quite simple: Don't live in a food desert.

>The solution is quite simple: Don't live in a food desert.

For the people on HN who tend to skew towards wealthy white-collar work this is fine advice, but it's absolutely not possible for a lot of people from lower incomes. Not only can they not afford to move, they can't afford to leave their entire social support structures and build them anew.

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