Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Does Verapamil Help With Diabetes?

April 11th, 2012
Written by Michael O'Leary

If you are a mouse with human pancreatic islet cells in your body, taking a common drug for high blood pressure appears to reverse the diabetes-related death of those islet cells, which is good news for mice involved in diabetes research.
Dr. Anath Shalev, director of the University of
Alabama Birmingham Comprehensive Diabetes Center

The research team led by Dr. Anath Shalev, director of the University of Alabama Birmingham Comprehensive Diabetes Center, have found that the drug verapamil, which belongs to the family of high blood pressure medicines called calcium channel blockers, slows the progression of type 1 or 2 diabetes, at least in mice. But the authors think it may have clinical application in humans with diabetes, particularly since the drug is already FDA approved for high blood pressure. Their study appears in the March 22 issue of the journal Diabetes. (Published site)


For more than a decade the authors have been studying how high blood sugar uniquely turns on a gene called TXNIP, short for thioredoxin-interacting protein,. They had earlier shown that excessive levels of this gene in diabetes causes cells to self-destruct. They also found that lowering TXNIP levels in heart muscle tissue reduces the damage caused by heart attacks. They were surprised, however, to find hints of verapamil’s effect amid their effort to design a drug to shut down TXNIP.

“We long have felt that finding an oral medication that inhibits beta cell TXNIP expression would represent a major breakthrough, and now we have the first study showing that a drug already proven safe in years of clinical practice may halt the development of diabetes,” senior author of the paper Shalev said in a prepared statement. “Our results are encouraging because patients with diabetes suffer from beta cell death as part of their disease, there has been no treatment targeting this problem and TXNIP-inhibition promises to reverse it.”

Islets are a group of cells found in the pancreas that secrete hormones into the blood stream. Beta cells are one type of islet cells that secrete insulin to control blood sugar levels. These  begin to die in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes as the disease progresses. No one suspected that calcium channel blockers might reverse beta cell death because the studies that led to their FDA approval measured their effect on heart attacks, not blood sugar.

In their experiments, Shalev’s team used molecular biology techniques to watch as production of TXNIP rose in beta cells to abnormal levels as mice became diabetic and then fell again as they received verapamil.

“The debate now should begin as to whether physicians should consider verapamil an additional treatment to protect beta cells in patients with both hypertension and diabetes, similar to the use of ACE inhibitors for kidney protection,” said Shalev, who also is a clinician. “As it stands, it can take years before patients with diabetes receive verapamil, possibly missing a window of opportunity. Future clinical studies need to test whether or not earlier treatment could have a profound effect on diabetes progression by saving more beta cells.”

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