Metformin and Bee Venom Enhanced Histological Changes of the Pancreas in Diabetic Mice

Abstract

Metformin is an oral anti-diabetic medication that is used to manage type 2 diabetes
mellitus (T2DM). Bee venom (BV) is recently showing several health properties including
pain relief, antimicrobial, and antineoplastic with limited evidence as antidiabetic effect.
Thus, the current experiment is performed to identify the proper activities of BV to regulate
the level of glucose and insulin, and curative role on the histological structure of the panaceas. Totally, 20 adult male mice were used, 15 of them were subjected to diabetes induction by alloxan and the remaining 5 mice were considered as control. These15 diabetic mice
were further divided into diabetic control group, the second is diabetic treated with oral
metformin and the third group is diabetic treated with intraperitoneal BV. At the end of 30
days, the concentrations of glucose and insulin were detected, and the pancreata were extracted for histological evaluation. The result showed that the diabetic mice showed a significant elevation of glucose concentration associated with reduction insulin concentration.
Administration of metformin and BV modulated these impairments and caused significant
reduction of glucose concentration and elevation of insulin concentration. Furthermore,
alloxan induced several histological alterations of the pancreas including impairments in the
shape and size of the islet of langerhans, vacuolization of the islet and beta cells, irregular
arrangement of alpha and beta cells, bleeding, initial degeneration of beta cells. All these
impairments were returned to almost normal in response to metformin and BV. To conclude BV could be potential curative toxin that mange diabetic condition like metformin.