Diabetes drug response was the highlight of a broad and internationally- corroborated study that scientists were able to conclude that some maintenance medicines for diabetes like metformin, can be determined through genetic differences.
Diabetes drug responses may help improve treatment
The study published in the journal Nature Genetics was the result of a high profile research collaboration between University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Dundee in Scotland.
This is the first among studies involving diabetes treatment by the Metformin Genetics Consortium by a team of elite researchers to find ways to improve treatment for diabetes.
Varying responses to metformin treatment
Metformin is the most common drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and the study revealed that ethnicity and genetic disposition plays a major role through a metformin-enhancing gene variant commonly found African-Americans compared to other ethnic groups.
“Right now we treat most people with type 2 diabetes the same,” says Dr. Kathy Giacomini, professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences from UCSF and a co- author of the study, “but we wanted to discover whether there might be a specific genetic marker that could let us take a precision medicine approach to prescribing and dosing this common diabetes medication.”
Metformin has been used as a primary treatment for diabetes for several decades and helps control blood sugar levels and reduces the risk for complications that may result in eye, kidney or heart diseases.
Also very recently, the drug has been tested to show positive effects against helping treat cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, fatty liver disease, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
It has also been found to possess anti-aging properties, for which clinical trials are now underway.
The study involved some 13,123 test participants where a three-stage genome-wide association study was conducted to determine the variances in metformin response, where they discovered the SLC2A2 gene that exhibited a heightened response to metformin.
This gene then encodes a glucose transporter called GLUT2, which is a protein responsible for regulating glucose in the liver, kidneys and blood.
“Metformin is an old drug that is widely used, yet we are still discovering more about how it works,” says Sook Wah Yee, PhD, a researcher in Giacomini’s lab and a co-author of the study. “Although we’ve known that GLUT2 is important for glucose transport for many years, we had not previously thought that variation in the gene encoding this transporter would alter how metformin works.”
The researchers are hopeful that this discovery may help scientists to better understand the effects of metformin for patient and help determine proper dosage of the drug for all the patients in order to optimize its potency in treating the disease.
Diabetes affects no less than 1.4 million Americans each year and is the 7th leading cause of deaths in the United States, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Image Credit: University of California, San Francisco
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