Metformin exerts a dual effect on Mucorales virulence by altering oxidative metabolism through the regulation of rhizoferrin levels

Clicks: 8
ID: 315471
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #144 of 166 articles by views in medical mycology

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 166 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Mucormycosis, caused by fungi belonging to the order Mucorales, is associated with patients who suffer uncontrolled diabetes mellitus. Blood glucose management in diabetic patients is performed through multiple strategies, with metformin being a common drug for controlling these levels. In this work, we show that the addition of low or high concentrations of metformin during the culture of Mucor lusitanicus and Rhizopus arrhizus differentially affects the toxicity of their cell-free culture supernatants (SS) toward Caenorhabditis elegans. The same effect was observed in infections of Galleria mellonella and mice treated with different metformin concentrations. Virulence induced by low concentrations of metformin correlates with augmented mitochondrial activity, which enhances respiration and increases hydroxyl radical (•OH) levels. Moreover, the SS toxicity towards C. elegans was eliminated by a mitophagy inducer and oxidative metabolism inhibitors, supporting that the effect of low metformin concentration on virulence is mediated by enhancing mitochondrial activity. Meanwhile, high metformin concentrations led to decreased virulence and reduced mitochondrial activity, along with the upregulation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)-α1-subunit (known also as Snfα-1), a mitophagy marker, catalase, and superoxide dismutase transcripts. Furthermore, deletion of the genes encoding the regulatory subunit of protein kinase A (PkaR1) and rhizoferrin synthetase partially revealed the signaling pathway underlying metformin-induced virulence of M. lusitanicus. In general, we found that metformin concentrations have a dual effect on the virulence of both Mucorales species by regulating oxidative metabolism, which may be relevant to the outcome of mucormycosis in diabetic patients treated with metformin.
Reference Key
openalex_W7163035874 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors J Alberto Patiño-Medina, Viridiana Alejandre‐Castañeda, Cesar J Torres-Cortes, León Francisco Ruíz‐Herrera, Marco I. Valle-Maldonado, César R. Solorio‐Alvarado, Joel Ramı́rez-Emiliano, Karla Viridiana Castro-Cerritos, Rafael Ortiz-Alvarado, Francisco E. Nicolás, Victoriano Garre, Martha I. Ramírez-Díaz, Ulrike Binder, Víctor Meza-Carmen
Journal medical mycology
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mmy/myag053
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mmy/myag053
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.