Metformin: Out of Backwaters and into the Mainstream

Metformin has come to prominence despite a checkered history. Its story is one of delays, uncertainties, and dead ends, as well as fortuitous accidents. It is a drug, born of folklore, with reasonably well-established clinical benefits but whose precise mechanism of action has resisted definition. Y...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American scientist 2017-03, Vol.105 (2), p.102-111
Main Authors: Rea, Philip A., Tien, Anderson Y.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accidents
Cancer therapies
Delay
Diabetes
Drugs
Glucose
Insulin resistance
Metformin
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Scientists
Uncertainty
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Summary:Metformin has come to prominence despite a checkered history. Its story is one of delays, uncertainties, and dead ends, as well as fortuitous accidents. It is a drug, born of folklore, with reasonably well-established clinical benefits but whose precise mechanism of action has resisted definition. Yet, metformin is the current standard of care for the treatment of one of the most common chronic conditions in the modern world -- type 2 diabetes -- and its chemical structure is remarkably simple by comparison with that of many other drugs. Of the many baffling aspects of metformin is the haphazard way in which it first got noticed and came to assume the standing it now has at very disparate times -- separated by decades -- in different parts of the developed world. To get a sense of the scale of metformin's impact, it is necessary to understand what it treats.
ISSN:0003-0996
1545-2786
DOI:10.1511/2017.105.2.102