• Fehmida Bibi, Ikram Ullah, Myeong Ok Kim, and Muhammad Imran Naseer.
• Fehmida Bibi, King Fahd Medical Research Center (KFMRC), King Abdulaziz University, 21589, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
• Pak J Med Sci. 2017 May 1; 33 (3): 581-585.

ObjectiveSeizures are one of the neurodegenerative disorders of human being. Metformin has antioxidant properties and commonly used as an oral antidiabetic drug. The current study was aimed to observe the neuroprotective effect of metformin against PTZ-induced apoptotic neurodegeneration in human cortical neuronal cell culture.MethodsTo observe that exposure of pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) at the dose of (30mM) for 30 minutes induced neuronal cell death by activation of caspase-3 in human cortical neuronal 2 (HCN-2) cell line. While the metformin at the dose of (20mM) along with PTZ for 30 minutes showed neuroprotection against PTZ-induced neuronal cell loss by MTT assay and Western blot analysis.ResultsThe results of this study showed that PTZ-induced neuronal cell death by activation of pro apoptotic proteins caspase-3 and 9 whereas the exposure of metformin showed its protective effect against neuronal loss in HCN-2 cell line. Finally, our results showed that exposure of metformin can prevent the harmful effect induced by PTZ in neuronal cells cultures.ConclusionsOur finding suggest that metformin exposure attenuates PTZ-induced neuronal cell death may act as a safe therapeutics and neuroprotective agent for the treatment of neuronal loss as result of seizure.

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