Xu Y, et al. – The effect of pioglitazone and metformin in treating patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are compared in this study. The current study showed that pioglitazone ameliorated menstrual cycle and ovulation better than metformin and metformin ameliorated BMI and F–G scores better than pioglitazone in treating patients with PCOS. Pioglitazone could be a good choice for the patients with PCOS who were intolerant or invalid to metformin for the treatment.

Methods

• For this study, they designed a meta–analysis of the related literature.
• This study was conducted to objectively assess the clinical efficacy and safety by comparing pioglitazone with metformin administrated by PCOS patients.
• In this study, they searched Cochrane Library, EMBASE and PubMed (last updated December 2016) database.

Results

• Total 11 studies among 486 related articles were recognized through searches.
• In this study, they used fixed effects and random effects models to calculate the overall risk estimates.
• The outcomes of the meta–analysis propose that improvement of the menstrual cycle and ovulation in pioglitazone treatment group was better than metformin group [OR = 2.31, 95% CI (1.37, 3.91), P < 0.001, I² = 41.8%].
• Improvement of the F–G scores in metformin treatment group was better than pioglitazone group [SMD = 0.29, 95% CI (0.0, 0.59), P = 0.048, I² = 0.0%].
• BMI was more elevated in pioglitazone group than in metformin group [SMD = 0.83, 95% CI (0.24, 1.41), P = 0.006, I² = 82.8%].
• There were no significant differences of the other data between the two groups.