Clomiphene outperforms metformin for PCOS infertility treatment
Source: New England Journal of Medicine 2007; Advance online publication
Comparing the efficacy of metformin and clomiphene treatment for achieving pregnancy in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.
The diabetes drug metformin is less useful than standard treatment with the infertility drug clomiphene in helping women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) achieve pregnancy, report researchers.
The scientists randomly assigned 626 infertile women with PCOS to receive clomiphene and a placebo (n=209), metformin and a placebo (n=208), or both metformin and clomiphene (n=209) for up to 6 months.
Only 7 percent of women who received metformin had a successful pregnancy, compared with 23 percent of those in the clomiphene only group, and 27 percent of those who recieved combined clomiphene-metformin treatment.
Furthermore, although women in the combination therapy group ovulated more frequently than women in the other groups, this did not translate into a significantly greater number of pregnancies for this group.
"An ovulation on clomiphene treatment is twice as likely to result in pregnancy as an ovulation on metformin, thus all ovulations are not alike," said Richard Legro, from Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania, and co-workers.
"Our study supports the use of clomiphene citrate alone as first-line therapy for infertility in women with PCOS," they conclude.
"We did not find a significant benefit of combination therapy with clomiphene and metformin over clomiphene alone with respect to the live-birth rate."
Posted: 08 February 2007
http://www.orgyn.com/en/news/2007/We...91220771296296
Clomiphene outperforms metformin for PCOS infertility treatment 
I'm glad to see folks are doing research on this, though.
