Antioxidative potential of metformin: Possible protective mechanism against generating OH radicals

Abstract

Exposure to particulate matter (PM) canlead to the excessive accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which causes oxidative stress and endangers human health. In this study, the effects of metformin on PM-induced radicals were investigated, and the antioxidation reaction mechanism of metformin was analyzed by the density functional theory (DFT) method. The corresponding results revealed that the consumption rate of dithiothreitol (DTT) increased as the metformin concentration (0–40 mmol/L) increased under exposure to PM active components. Moreover, the OH radical content decreased as the metformin concentration increased. This result may be related to the consumption of PM-induced OH radicals by metformin, which promotes the DTT consumption rate. Additionally, because the initiation reaction has a high barrier, the oxidation reaction rate between metformin and ·O2 − is not very fast, although various catalysts may be present in the human environment. Importantly, we found that the barrier of metformin induced by OH radicals is only 9.6 kcal/mol while the barrier of metformin induced by oxygen is 57.9 kcal/mol, which shows that the rate of the ·OH-initiated oxidative reaction of metformin is much faster and that this reaction path occurs more easily. By sample analysis, the mean OH radical generation was 55 nmol/min/g (ranging from 5 to 105 nmol/min/g) on haze days and 30 nmol/min/g (ranging from 10 to 50 nmol/min/g) on non-haze days. Moreover, OH radical generation was higher on haze days than on neighboring non-haze days. Taken together, all data suggest that metformin could consume the PM-induced radicals, such as OH radicals and ·O2 −, thereby providing health protection.