Do Patients Die with or from Metformin-Associated Lactic Acidosis (MALA)? Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of pH and Lactate as Predictors of Mortality in MALA.

CONCLUSION: Our review found higher mortality from MALA than seen in recent studies. This may be due to variation in standard medical practice both geographically and across the study interval, sample size, misidentification of MALA for another disease process and vice versa, confounding by selection and reporting biases, and treatment intensity (e.g., hemodialysis) influenced by degree of pH and lactate derangement. The ROC curves showed poor predictive power of either lactate or pH for mortality in MALA. With the exception of patients with acute metformin overdose, patients with MALA usually have coexisting precipitating illnesses such as sepsis or renal failure, though lactate from MALA is generally higher than would be considered survivable for those disease states on their own. It is possible that mortality is more related to that coexisting illness than MALA itself, and many patients die with MALA rather than from MALA. Additional work looking solely at MALA in healthy patients with acute metformin overdose may show a closer relationship between lactate, pH, and mortality.
PMID: 31907741 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Journal of Medical Toxicology - January 5, 2020 Category: Toxicology Authors: Blumenberg A, Benabbas R, Sinert R, Jeng A, Wiener SW Tags: J Med Toxicol Source Type: research