Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Apr 15, 2025; 16(4): 100533
Published online Apr 15, 2025. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v16.i4.100533
Exploration of metformin-based drug combination for mitigating diabetes-associated atherosclerotic diseases
Biao Qu, Zheng Li, Wei Hu
Biao Qu, Wei Hu, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230601, Anhui Province, China
Zheng Li, Jiangsu Engineering Research Center of Cardiovascular Drugs Targeting Endothelial Cells, College of Health Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221000, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: Hu W designed the article; Qu B and Li Z drafted and revised the article.
Supported by the Natural Science Research Project of Anhui Province, No. 2023AH053172; National Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province, No. 2408085QH260; Projects of Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Anhui Province, No. 2024CCCX082; and National Natural Science Foundation Incubation Program of The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University, No. 2022GMFY08.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report having no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wei Hu, PhD, Professor, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University, No. 678 Furong Road, Hefei 230601, Anhui Province, China. huwei@ahmu.edu.cn
Received: August 20, 2024
Revised: December 30, 2024
Accepted: January 10, 2025
Published online: April 15, 2025
Processing time: 192 Days and 19.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The hyperglycemic state can actually induce atherosclerosis development or further accelerate its progression, which leads to cardio-cerebrovascular diseases associated with high morbidity and mortality. As metformin is the preferred first-line drug to manage type 2 diabetes, metformin combined with either hypoglycemic agents, hypolipidemic agents, or systemic antioxidant/anti-inflammatory agents, have been investigated to provide additional vascular benefits. It is quite clear that such exploration can contribute to finding a better drug combination to mitigate diabetes-associated atherosclerotic diseases.