EVERY year, 20 million prescriptions are written for metformin, a glucose-lowering medicine taken by 90 per cent of the three million Britons diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

Yet patients are not being warned that the drug also lowers levels of vitamin B12 and this can trigger peripheral neuropathy - a form of nerve damage which affects around half of all people suffering from diabetes.

Peripheral neuropathy weakens cardiac tissue, increasing the risk of a heart attack, and causes ulcers which refuse to heal and result in an average of 20 amputations a day. This nerve damage is most commonly caused by prolonged high blood sugar levels.

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