Therapeutic Effects of thiamine (vitamin B1) in the Improvement of Vascular Complications of Diabetic Patients

Background and Objective: Various pathogenesis and daily increase in number of diabetic patients, emphasizes the necessity of finding new therapeutic methods. Nowadays, physicians focus on controlling the blood sugar, although the protections against diabetic complications like: retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy are being ignored. Several studies on diabetic patients suggest that thiamine metabolism in diabetic is deficient. Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an essential cofactor of several enzymes involved in carbohydrates metabolism. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review the physiological role of thiamine and its derivatives such as benfotiamine in metabolism of glucose and the effectiveness of thiamine on lowering the secondary diabetes complication. Search Method: The study was conducted by searching the English and Persian databases like: Pubmed, Cochrane library, ovid, Google scholar, SID, Magiran and Iranmedex with the terms: thiamine, diabetes, retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy between the years 1988 till 2015. We used original and review articles that related to our topic. Among 56 related articles, 38 articles with the full text access were reviewed. Findings: based on the results of animal models and human studies, thiamine and its derivatives such as benfotiamine block many harmful hyperglycemia-pathway that leading to the development of diabetic complication, like: hexosamine pathway, advanced glycation end products formation, protein kinase C and NF-κB activation; though they increase the activation of transketolase enzyme. Consequently, the development of incipient diabetic nephropathy, neuropathy and retinopathy were prevented. Conclusion: Since glucose metabolism depends on thiamine as an enzyme cofactor, it is biologically feasible to suppose that adequate thiamine supplementation in diabetics might have a profound effect on metabolic compensation and thus development of vascular complications. It could also possibly influence earlier stages of abnormal glucose tolerance such as components of metabolic syndrome. Thus thiamine can be an appropriate and inexpensive treatment option for diabetic patients.

کلیدواژه ها:

thiamine ، diabetes ، nephropathy ، retinopathy ، neuropathy