Sustained influence of metformin therapy on circulating glucagon-like peptide-1 levels in individuals with and without type 2 diabetes.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Glucagon in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To investigate, in the Carotid Atherosclerosis: Metformin for Insulin Resistance (CAMERA) trial (NCT00723307), whether the influence of metformin on the glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 axis in individuals with and without type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is sustained and related to changes in glycaemia or weight, and to investigate basal and post-meal GLP-1 levels in patients with T2DM in the cross-sectional Diabetes Research on Patient Stratification (DIRECT) study.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

CAMERA was a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial of metformin in 173 participants without diabetes.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Glucagon and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Glucagon.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Glucagon, giving a reference point.

In the DIRECT study, the researchers examined active and total fasting and 60-minute post-meal GLP-1 levels in 775 people recently diagnosed with T2DM treated with metformin or diet, using Student's t-tests and linear regression.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Blood Glucose, Case-Control Studies, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Fasting, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1, Glycated Hemoglobin and Hypoglycemic Agents.

The authors tagged it with the keywords GLP-1, antidiabetic drug and metformin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glucagon.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Diabetes, obesity & metabolism), a journal based in England.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.