A new study has uncovered another benefit of one of the country’s most commonly prescribed medications for diabetes – joint pain relief.

More than six million scripts for metformin are written each year, mainly to treat type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at Monash University led a study to see whether the safe and inexpensive tablets could be repurposed to manage pain for those with knee arthritis.

More than 100 people, who didn’t have diabetes but were overweight and suffered knee arthritis, were involved in the trial.

One group was given metformin, the other group were given a placebo.

At six months, both groups was asked to rank their pain on a scale of 1 to 100.

The metformin group reported feeling pain reduction of 31.3 points on average, compared to just 18.9 points for the placebo group.

“These results support use of metformin for treatment of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis in people with overweight or obesity,” the researchers said.

“Because of the modest sample size, confirmation in a larger clinical trial is warranted.”

The study’s lead researcher Professor Flavia Cicuttini said the drug could be a potentially new and affordable way to improve knee pain.

“GPs are very familiar with metformin, which is a low-cost, safe medication,” she said.

“It could be provided to patients in addition to other treatments they use and has the potential to delay people having knee replacements before they are absolutely needed.

“If people on metformin have less knee pain and are able to do more physical activity, then knee replacements can wait.”