Role of metformin in inflammation.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Metformin has good anti-hyperglycemic effectiveness, but does not induce hypoglycemia，is very safe, and has become the preferred drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Recently, the other effects of metformin, such as being anti-inflammatory and delaying aging, have also attracted increased attention. METHODS AND RESULTS: The relevant literatures on pubmed and other websites for reading, classification and sorting, and did not involve any animal experiments. CONCLUSION: Metformin has anti-inflammatory effects through multiple routes, which provides potential therapeutic targets for certain inflammatory diseases, such as neuroinflammation and rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, inflammation is a key component of tumor occurrence and development ; thus, targeted inflammatory intervention is a significant benefit for both cancer prevention and treatment. Therefore, metformin may have further potential for inflammation-related disease prevention and treatmen. However, the inflammatory mechanism is complex; various molecules are connected and influence each other. For example, metformin significantly inhibits p65 nuclear translocation, but pretreatment with compound C, an AMPK inhibitor, abolishes this effect, and silencing of HMGB1 inhibits NF-κB activation . SIRT1 deacetylates FoxO, increasing its transcriptional activity . mTOR in dendritic cells regulates FoxO1 via AKT. The interactions among various molecules should be further explored to clarify their specific mechanisms and provide more direction for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, as well as cancer.