Evidence Hub

Role of metformin in functional endometrial hyperplasia and polycystic ovary syndrome involves the regulation of MEG3/miR-223/GLUT4 and SNHG20/miR-4486/GLUT4 signaling

Jie Liu, Yangchun Zhao, Long Chen, Rui-Lan Li, Y. Ning, Xiuzhi Zhu

Molecular Medicine Reports, 2022

19 citations

Abstract

Metformin (MET) can effectively treat endometrial hyperplasia (EH), and the expression of glucose transporter type 4 insulin-responsive (GLUT4) is closely associated with the development of EH. The present study aimed to verify the effect of MET in functional EH and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). H&E staining was performed to analyze the severity of EH, and immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the expression of GLUT4 in the endometrium of PCOS rats. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was used to calculate the expression of long non-coding (lnc)RNA-maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3), lncRNA-small nucleolar RNA host gene 20 (SNHG20), GLUT4 mRNA, microRNA (miR)-223 and miR-4486. Sequence analysis and luciferase assays were performed to explore the regulatory relationship among certain lncRNAs, miRNAs and target genes. EH in PCOS rats was efficiently inhibited by MET administration. The increased expression of GLUT4 in PCOS rats was attenuated by MET treatment. Moreover, the expression levels of lncRNA-MEG3 and lncRNA-SNHG20 were significantly inhibited in the endometrium of PCOS rats. MET treatment also showed remarkable efficiency in restoring the expression of lncRNA-MEG3 and lncRNA-SNHG20. Meanwhile, the expression levels of miR-223 and miR-4486 were notably elevated in the endometrium of PCOS rats, while MET treatment reduced the expression of miR-223 and miR-4486 in PCOS rats. Furthermore, a luciferase assay confirmed the inhibitory relationship between…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free