Your Metformin May Smell Fishy

Your Metformin May Smell Fishy: If your metformin smells like the inside of an inner tube or week old fish, you’re not the only one. If you regularly take metformin, one of the oldest and most respected tools in doctors’ anti-diabetes kits, chances are that you don’t detect the unpleasant odor that turns some Type 2’s against the drug. Some think it has a fishy smell, while others say that it reminds them of the inside of an inner tube. It’s usually metformin’s immediate-release formulation that has the off-putting smells, according to a Georgia professor who described the phenomenon in the February 16 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. See this week’s Item #2.