Impact of Genetics on Metformin Pharmacokinetics

Twin studies have long been a valuable tool for examining the relative role of environment and heredity in health issues such as disease and drug response. For example, twin studies in the 1960's and 1970's showed for the first time that variability in the elimination of many drugs was largely influenced by heredity. Monozygotic twin pairs showed little variability in the elimination of various drugs while dizygotic twin pairs, sharing only about one half of their genes, showed much greater variability. It is now known that the some of the variability in drug elimination observed in dizygotic twins was due to genetic differences in drug metabolizing enzymes, such as the cytochrome P450's. However, genetic variation in other genes, such as membrane transporters may also contribute to variability in drug response.

Membrane transporters play multiple roles in the body; they help to maintain cellular homeostasis through import and export mechanisms and also play an important role in drug response, affecting both the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs. Animal studies using mice genetically deficient in drug transporters and reports of drug interaction studies involving transporter substrates have provided convincing evidence that the level of function of several important drug transporters is an important determinant of drug response.

The current study will examine differences in the renal clearance of metformin in monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs. Metformin is an antidiabetic drug that has no significant hepatic metabolism and is actively secreted by the kidneys. Studies in our lab have shown that metformin is a substrate of the human organic cation transporter, hOCT2, which appears to be a major transporter involved in the renal secretion of cationic drugs. Data in the literature indicate that there is substantial variation in the net secretory clearance of metformin in normal, healthy volunteers. In five healthy volunteers, the ratio of renal clearance to creatinine clearance ranged from 1.5 to 4.2, nearly a 3-fold variation. We hypothesize that genetic variation in secretory transporters in the kidney, like hOCT2, may be responsible for the inter-individual differences in the secretory clearance of metformin and other drugs. Studies examining renal clearance of metformin in monozygotic and dizygotic twins will allow us to better understand the influence of heredity on variation in renal elimination. Furthermore, genotyping monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs with significant differences in renal clearance of metformin may give us insight into the genes responsible for this variability.