Metformin hydrochloride (MHCl) widely used for the treatment of Type 2 DM. The aim of this study was to investigate the early stage histopathological and immunohistochemical effects of MHCl and MHCl-loaded Alginate (AL) and AL-Chitosan (CS) beads on the pancreas of Streptozotocin (STZ)-Nicotinamide (NA) induced diabetic rats. The rats in the following groups were sacrificed 72 hours after drug administration and their pancreatic tissues were removed. The healthy rats (Control, Group I), diabetic rats (Group II; the fasting blood glucose level higher than 126 mg/dl), diabetic rats treated with pure drugs (Group III), blank beads (Group IV), MHCl-loaded-AL-CS (Group V) and AL (Group VI) beads. The prepared samples of pancreatic tissues were examined by histopathological and immunohistochemical methods. Severity of the atrophic appearance of langerhans islet in Groups II, III and IV was high. The degree of necrotic and degenerative changes of islets of langerhans in the Groups V and VI were reduced compared to the changes in the other groups (Groups II, III and IV; P<0.05). As immunohistochemical, the shrunken and distorted islet of langerhans with marked loss immunopositive b cells were observed for Groups II, III and IV. However, there were improvements in the number of immunopositive b cells and the diameter of islet of langerhans of Groups V and VI (P<0.05). MHCl-loaded AL-CS and AL beads might be beneficial to reduce the histopathological changes of pancreas and thereby, the effects of diabetes.

To Cite This Article: Mokhtare B, Cetin M and Saglam YS, 2018. Evaluation of histopathological and immunohistochemical effects of Metformin HCl-loaded beads formulations in Streptozotocin-Nicotinamide induced diabetic rats. Pak Vet J, 38(2): 127-132. http://dx.doi.org/10.29261/pakvetj/2018.026