Metabolic Effects of Fluoxetine in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials

Background The prevalence of obesity and diabetes is increasing dramatically throughout the world. Studies have shown that excess adiposity is a critical predictor of new onset T2DM. This meta-analysis is aimed to assess the metabolic effects of fluoxetine in T2DM. Methods and Findings Electronic search was conducted in the database Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library, from inception through to March 2011. A systematic review of the studies on the metabolic effects of fluoxetine in T2DM was performed. The weighted mean difference ( WMD ) and its 95% CI were calculated from the raw data extracted from the original literature. The software Review Manager (version 4.3.1) and Stata (version 11.0) were applied for meta-analysis. Five randomized, placebo-controlled trials were included in the meta-analysis. According to WMD calculation, fluoxetine therapy led to 4.27 Kg of weight loss (95%CI 2.58–5.97, P <0.000 01), 1.41 mmol/L of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) decrement (95%CI 0.19–2.64, P  = 0.02) and 0.54 mmol/L of triglyceride (TG) reduction (95%CI 0.35–0.73, P <0.000 01) compared with placebo. Moreover, fluoxetine therapy produced 0.78% of HbA1c decrement (95%CI −0.23–1.78). However, this effect was not statistically significant ( P  = 0.13). Conclusions Short period of fluoxetine therapy can lead to weight loss as well as reduction of FPG, HbA1c and TG in T2DM.