Recall report: Nostrum recalls another lot of metformin as carcinogen concerns continue

Conner Mitchell

Associate Editor

For the sec­ond time in Jan­u­ary and the third time in the last two months, a Kansas City, MO lab­o­ra­to­ry has pulled a lot of gener­ic met­formin from the shelves af­ter it was found to con­tain high­er-than-al­lowed lev­els of a prob­a­ble hu­man car­cino­gen.

The FDA on Tues­day an­nounced that Nos­trum Lab­o­ra­to­ries was vol­un­tar­i­ly re­call­ing a lot of met­formin HCl ex­tend­ed re­lease tablets, USP 750 mg, a type 2 di­a­betes drug (the gener­ic equiv­a­lent to Glu­cophage tablets) af­ter test­ing dis­cov­ered el­e­vat­ed lev­els of ni­trosamine, the prob­a­ble car­cino­gen.

Nos­trum’s Jan. 5 re­call of met­formin was al­so for the 750 mg tablets, while the lab’s orig­i­nal Nov. 2, 2020 re­call was for 500 mg tablets of the drug.

Met­formin is used to im­prove blood glu­cose con­trol in adults with type 2 di­a­betes mel­li­tus, and is an off-white, ob­long tablet stamped with “NM7”. The lot in Tues­day’s re­call is MET200601, with ex­pi­ra­tion dates of Ju­ly 2022. As with the pre­vi­ous two re­calls, Nos­trum has re­ceived no ad­verse ef­fects from the taint­ed drugs.

Any­one tak­ing met­formin who is con­cerned about the re­called batch is asked to con­sult with their physi­cian be­fore they stop tak­ing the drug, as do­ing so could be dan­ger­ous.

Nos­trum’s on­go­ing re­call is the lat­est in a line of at least eight man­u­fac­tur­ers across the globe tak­ing the com­mon­ly-used drugs off the shelves, all due to el­e­vat­ed ni­trosamine lev­els.