The mysterious metallic metal effect can explain its great health benefits

Metformin is the most widely prescribed diabetes medications in the world. Aside from lowering blood sugar levels, it is also known to have a wide range of useful side effects such as tumors, infections and atherosclerosis. However, although it has been used for more than 60 years until now, the work mechanism is still unclear, which hinders the development of the best drugs against these conditions.

“It is known that diabetics suffer from changes in blood levels of minerals such as copper, iron and zinc. It has not been clarified,” says the endocrine scientist at the University of Cuban and Wagua University. To do this, Ogawa and his team recruited about 200 diabetics at the Kobe University Hospital, half of them took metformin and half, in a study to analyze blood serum levels for these minerals and various mineral deficiency indicators.

In the magazine BMJ Research and Care Open DiabeticsThe Cuban University team has now published the first clinical guide to changing the levels of minerals in the blood in patients taking metformin. They have shown that drug use patients have a much less copper and iron levels and increase zinc levels. “It is important to clarify this in humans. Moreover, given that the decrease in copper and iron concentrations and an increase in zinc concentration are related to improving glucose tolerance and complications from preventing complications, these changes may be already associated with the work of metformin,” says Uigoa.

Recently, Japan has agreed to use IMEGLIMIN, a new diabetes drug that is derived from metformin but should not be able to connect minerals in the same way as the parent. “IMEGLIMIN is believed to have a different way of work, and we are already conducting studies to compare the effects of the two drugs,” says Uigoa.

Not only about understanding current medications, however. Ogawa explains the largest picture, saying: “We need both clinical trials and animal experiments to determine the causal relationship between the work of the drug and its effects. If these studies are more advanced, they may lead to the development of new drugs for diabetes and its complications by properly controlling metal concentrations in the body.”

This research was funded by the Japanese Association for the Employment of Science (GRANT 24H00638) and Manpei Suzuki Diabetes. It was conducted in cooperation with a researcher from the Diabetes and Endocrine Clinic in Kagayaki.