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University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers havediscovered that a drug already prescribed to millions of peoplewith diabetes could also have another important use: treating one of the world'sleading causes of blindness. In laboratory rat and cell-culture experiments, the scientistsfound that metformin, which is commonly used to control blood sugarlevels in type 2 diabetes, also substantially reduced the effectsof uveitis , an inflammation of the tissues just below the outer surface ofthe eyeball. Uveitis causes 10 to 15 percent of all cases ofblindness in the United States, and is responsible for an evenhigher proportion of blindness globally. The only treatment nowavailable for the disorder is steroid therapy, which has seriousside effects and cannot be used long-term. "Uveitis has various causes - the most common are infectiousdiseases and autoimmune disorders - but they all produceinflammation within the eye," said UTMB professor Kota V. Ramana,senior author of a paper on the study now online in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. "Metformin inhibits the process that causes that inflammation." The scientists discovered metformin's efficacy when they tested itin rats given an endotoxin that mimicked the inflammatory effectsof bacterial infection. The results showed clearly that metforminwas a very effective anti-uveitis agent. "We found that the drug is therapeutic as well as preventive - ifwe gave our rats the drug beforehand, they didn't develop uveitis,and if we gave it after uveitis had developed, it was therapeutic,"said UTMB professor Satish Srivastava, also an author of the IOVSpaper. "Metformin's strong anti-inflammatory properties make thispossible." According to the researchers, metformin works by activating anenzyme called AMPK, which in turn damps down the activity of theprotein NF-kappa B. The inhibition of NF-kappa B suppresses theproduction of inflammatory signaling molecules - cytokines andchemokines - needed to initiate and sustain uveitis. Because metformin is already used so widely as a therapy fordiabetes, the UTMB scientists believe that it has a good chance ofbeing rapidly adopted as an anti-uveitis drug. "I think after a few more pre-clinical studies are done, we can getthis drug to patients in a shorter time than usual," Ramana said."Its safety is already known, so all that we need to see is itsefficacy in humans." Additional References Citations. I am an expert from bottle-fillingmachine.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Labeling Machines , China Beer Filling Machine, Barrel Filling Machine,and more.
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