Kasper Staberg Madsen received his medical degree from University of Copenhagen in 2018. Since that he has been working at different surgical departments at Hvidovre hospital, including gynaecology and obstetrics, general surgery and latest at the orthopaedic department. Simultaneously, Kasper has published three Cochrane reviews (two as first author and one as second author) in collaboration with the Cochrane Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders Group in Duesseldorph, Germany. The studies investigated metformin, sulphonylureas and pioglitazone in the prevention or treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Research-on-Research: Metformin is widely used as first-line therapy in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Increasing evidence suggest that metformin has beneficial effects beyond its effect on glucose control. As a PhD student, affiliated with Section for Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Research, at the Parker Institute, Kasper will be performing a series of meta-research projects. As an evidence-based researcher he will evaluate the empirical evidence for the pros and cons around metformin as a potential drug to prescribe to patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. In the meta-studies, he will (i) investigate metformin as a weight loss agent; (ii) explore the association between metformin and risk of adverse effects, and finally (iii) perform a standard systematic review and meta-analysis of all trials investigating the effect of metformin for any of the many different rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases.
Kasper will do that by applying meta-epidemiological and systematic review techniques supervised by Professors Henning Bliddal, Robin Christensen and Dr Sabrina Nielsen. The perspectives are, that metformin, advantaged by its very low cost and potential protective effects on cardiovascular disease, could potentially be applied as mono- (or add-on) therapy in different rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. So metformin, the not so new kid on the block, might turn into a blockbuster drug for patients with musculoskeletal conditions.