Summary: Researchers report Metformin, one of the most widely prescribed drugs for diabetes, helped reduce symptoms associated with nicotine withdrawal in animal models.
Source: University of Pennsylvania.
Metformin, the most widely used medication for diabetes, has also been shown to help treat dementia and some cancers. New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins Medicine shows smoking cessation may be added to that list.
In a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the research team found that after giving mice metformin the animals displayed reduced symptoms when going through nicotine withdrawal.
“Although we are just beginning to characterize this new role for metformin, our study suggests that the protein it acts on could be a new target for smoking cessation treatment,” said senior author Julie Blendy, PhD, a professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at Penn.
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, with more people dying from nicotine addiction than any other preventable cause of death. Even though quitting smoking brings many health benefits, the abstinence rate remains low with current medications, likely because of an array of undesirable withdrawal symptoms.
Metformin has a variety of targets, one of which is a protein called AMPK. This study showed that the AMPK pathway in the hippocampus of the brain is activated following long-term use of nicotine. But, this heightened AMPK activity is rapidly reversed during nicotine withdrawal, which is associated with negative symptoms such as anxiety.
Increasing AMPK levels using metformin decreases anxiety following nicotine withdrawal in the mice. Anxiety was measured in two behavior tasks that are designed to trigger relevant behaviors and contrast the tendency for mice to explore or engage in social investigation against the anxiety-producing properties of novel objects in the cage (the marble burying test) or an open, brightly lit space (a novelty-induced decrease in eating test).