<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>gnicholas</author><text>TLDR:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;By day 300 of follow-up, 93 (8.3%) of 1,126 participants said they had received a diagnosis of long COVID by a provider. The cumulative incidence of long COVID by day 300 in those who took a 14-day course of metformin was 6.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.2 to 8.2) compared to 10.4% (7.8 to 12.9) in the placebo group, or 39.4% lower.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, half of the participants in the study (which took place starting in December of 2020) were unvaccinated. The researchers noted that metformin appears to have reduced the viral load greatly. I wonder if that is equally true for vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. It would seem plausible (not a doctor) that the reduction in viral load is related to the lower incidence of long COVID.&lt;p&gt;Now that we&amp;#x27;re in 2023, and pretty much everyone is either multiply-vaccinated or has had COVID, the study might turn out differently. If anyone has looked into the paper&amp;#x2F;data, I&amp;#x27;d be interested to know whether the benefit is equal among vaccinated&amp;#x2F;non-vaccinated.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Metformin shown to prevent long Covid</title><url>https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/common-diabetes-drug-shown-prevent-long-covid</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>Important to note, it can also cause birth defects in male offspring when taken by fathers.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;med.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;all-news&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;birth-defects-diabetes-drug.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;med.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;all-news&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;birth-defects...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.acpjournals.org&amp;#x2F;doi&amp;#x2F;10.7326&amp;#x2F;M21-4389&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.acpjournals.org&amp;#x2F;doi&amp;#x2F;10.7326&amp;#x2F;M21-4389&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Metformin shown to prevent long Covid</title><url>https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/common-diabetes-drug-shown-prevent-long-covid</url></story>