Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Findings could lead to diabetes treatments with less side effects
PHILADELPHIA - A team, led by senior author Morris J. Birnbaum, MD, PhD, the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Medicine, with the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, found that the diabetes drug metformin works in a different way than previously understood. Their research in mice found that metformin suppresses the liver hormone glucagon's ability to generate an important signaling molecule, pointing to new drug targets. The findings were published online this week in Nature.
For fifty years, one of the few classes of therapeutics effective in reducing the overactive glucose production associated with diabetes has been the biguanides, which includes metformin, the most frequently prescribed drug for type 2 diabetes. The inability of insulin to keep liver glucose output in check is a major factor in the high blood sugar of type 2 diabetes and other diseases of insulin resistance.
"Overall, metformin lowers blood glucose by decreasing liver production of glucose," says Birnbaum. "But we didn't really know how the drug accomplished that."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uops-mdd010213.php
PHILADELPHIA - A team, led by senior author Morris J. Birnbaum, MD, PhD, the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Medicine, with the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, found that the diabetes drug metformin works in a different way than previously understood. Their research in mice found that metformin suppresses the liver hormone glucagon's ability to generate an important signaling molecule, pointing to new drug targets. The findings were published online this week in Nature.
For fifty years, one of the few classes of therapeutics effective in reducing the overactive glucose production associated with diabetes has been the biguanides, which includes metformin, the most frequently prescribed drug for type 2 diabetes. The inability of insulin to keep liver glucose output in check is a major factor in the high blood sugar of type 2 diabetes and other diseases of insulin resistance.
"Overall, metformin lowers blood glucose by decreasing liver production of glucose," says Birnbaum. "But we didn't really know how the drug accomplished that."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uops-mdd010213.php