Thiamine precursor Benfotiamine helps Endothelial Progenitor Cells

From: http://virilitycenters.com/blog/


Posted on September 15, 2011 by Virility Centers of America, Inc.
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Having come across the paper suggesting that thiamine dietary intake is associated with increased circulating endothelial progenitor cells but only in diabetics and not in healthy volunteers, I typed in “thiamine” and “endothelial progenitor cells” into pubmed. What came up was this paper (Marchetti et al. Benfotiamine counteracts glucose toxicity effects on endothelial progenitor cell differentiation via Akt/FoxO signaling. Diabetes. 2006 Aug;55(8):2231-7).



While thiamine is water soluble, benfotiamine is a synthetic lipid-soluble form of thiamine (vitamin B-1) that was created by Japanese chemists 4 decades ago as a treatment for alcoholic neuritis. It is supposedly a “food supplement” and a very potent metabolic precursor of active thiamine.



In the study, scientists cultured human endothelial progenitor cells with high concentrations of glucose. As we have seen in other studies, glucose inhibited the ability of the endothelial progenitor cells to form blood vessels. When benfotiamine as added to the cultures, the endothelial progenitor cells regained their ability to make functional endothelium. The scientists then went on to examine molecular mechanisms implicated in the protective effects of benfotiamine. The PI3-kinase/AKT pathway is known to protect endothelial cells from death and is actually activated by estrogen in endothelial progenitor cells. The investigators found that inhibiting this pathway would abrogate the therapeutic effects of benfotiamine.



Given that benfotiamine seems to be protective to endothelial progenitor cells against the inhibitory effects of high glucose, it may be interesting to see if this agent could augment efficacy of heterogeneous stem cell therapies in diabetes that rely on functional endothelial progenitor cells. Of course, another interesting use for benfotiamine would be in the area of erectile dysfunction associated with diabetes.