History of Metformin

Metformin is the first-line pharmacologic treatment for patients with T2DM particularly in people who are overweight.

Its history can be traced from the use of Galega officinalis in medieval Europe as a treatment for symptoms of diabetes. In 1929, Slotta and Tschesche discovered the sugar-lowering action of metformin.

By 1950 a Philippine physician Eusebio Garcia used metformin to treat influenza and discovered that it also lowered the blood sugar. In 1957 Jean Sterne, a physician at the Hospital Laennec and Aron Laboratories in Paris, coins the name Glucophage. He noted the report form Garcia and investigated it clinically for the treatment of diabetes. He published clinical trial of diabetes was then completed and the UK introduced it in 1958 and Canada 1972.

Metformin is somewhat similar in structure to the drug “phenformin” which in 1977 was removed from the US market because of an increased risk of lactic acidosis.

A steady stream of in vivo studies can be seen in the early 1960s, hen USSR and various other European countries started when FDA approved metformin for the treatment of T2DM. It is currently being marketed by Bristol-Myers under the name of Glucophage.
History of Metformin