{"id":1841,"date":"2013-12-23T14:27:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T14:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/?p=1841"},"modified":"2013-12-23T14:28:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T14:28:19","slug":"how-metformin-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/2013\/12\/how-metformin-works.html","title":{"rendered":"How metformin works"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/a>

Chris Triggle, Gnanapragasam Arunachalam and Hong Ding{credit}WCMC-Q{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have managed to understand how metformin, a widely used oral diabetes drug, interacts with the body to control the blood glucose level.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, metformin works on the\u00a0\u2018longevity gene\u2019 SIRT1<\/em> to protect the user\u2019s vascular system against deterioration caused by glucose toxicity.<\/p>\n

When the researchers exposed\u00a0mouse microvascular endothelial cells\u00a0to high blood glucose levels, they noticed a significant reduction in the expression of SIRT1 and aging of endothelial \u00a0cells. Treating the mice with metformin countered this reduction in SIRT1 expression and protected\u00a0endothelial \u00a0cells from this premature aging. However, after knockdown of\u00a0SIRT1 <\/em>the mice lost the protective effect produced by metformin. This suggests that the protection the drug offers for diabetes is at least partly due to its effect on the expression of\u00a0SIRT1.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe most common cause of death for diabetes patients is vascular and microvascular deterioration \u2013 it\u2019s like an advanced aging of the vascular system \u2013 so metformin is an extremely useful drug,\u201d said\u00a0Chris Triggle, professor of pharmacology at WCMC-Q and one of the authors of the research that was published in the British Journal of Pharmacology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He adds\u00a0that metformin has long been known to reduce morbidity in patients with diabetes-associated microvascular disease, but that until now the reason for this beneficial effect had not been understood.<\/p>\n

In the past, metformin was thought to act by reducing\u00a0gluconeogenesis – or the formation of glucose from non-carbohydrate sources – in the liver, which in turn would reduce the amount of glucose in the blood and decrease vascular damage.\u00a0\u201cWe realized some years ago that the reported and generally accepted mechanisms of metformin did not really fit with the pharmacokinetic profile – the way the drug interacts with the body – of the drug. Our study proves that metformin does indeed have a direct protective action on the vasculature,\u201d said Triggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have managed to understand how metformin, a widely used oral diabetes drug, interacts with the body to control the blood glucose level.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}