Metformin strongly affects transcriptome of peripheral blood cells in healthy individuals

PLoS One. 2019 Nov 8;14(11):e0224835. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224835. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Metformin is a commonly used antihyperglycaemic agent for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nevertheless, the exact mechanisms of action, underlying the various therapeutic effects of metformin, remain elusive. The goal of this study was to evaluate the alterations in longitudinal whole-blood transcriptome profiles of healthy individuals after a one-week metformin intervention in order to identify the novel molecular targets and further prompt the discovery of predictive biomarkers of metformin response. Next generation sequencing-based transcriptome analysis revealed metformin-induced differential expression of genes involved in intestinal immune network for IgA production and cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathways. Significantly elevated faecal sIgA levels during administration of metformin, and its correlation with the expression of genes associated with immune response (CXCR4, HLA-DQA1, MAP3K14, TNFRSF21, CCL4, ACVR1B, PF4, EPOR, CXCL8) supports a novel hypothesis of strong association between metformin and intestinal immune system, and for the first time provide evidence for altered RNA expression as a contributing mechanism of metformin's action. In addition to universal effects, 4 clusters of functionally related genes with a subject-specific differential expression were distinguished, including genes relevant to insulin production (HNF1B, HNF1A, HNF4A, GCK, INS, NEUROD1, PAX4, PDX1, ABCC8, KCNJ11) and cholesterol homeostasis (APOB, LDLR, PCSK9). This inter-individual variation of the metformin effect on the transcriptional regulation goes in line with well-known variability of the therapeutic response to the drug.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Biomarkers
  • Blood Cells / drug effects*
  • Blood Cells / metabolism*
  • Clinical Trials as Topic
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Feces / chemistry
  • Female
  • Gene Expression Profiling*
  • Gene Expression Regulation / drug effects*
  • Healthy Volunteers
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Metformin / pharmacology*
  • Middle Aged
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Receptors, Fc
  • Transcriptome*
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Biomarkers
  • IgA, secretory receptor
  • Receptors, Fc
  • Metformin

Grants and funding

The study was supported by the European Regional Development Fund under the project “Investigation of interplay between multiple determinants influencing response to metformin: search for reliable predictors for efficacy of type 2 diabetes therapy” (Project No.: 1.1.1.1/16/A/091, https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.