Conditions: Metabolic Syndrome Insulin Sensitivity
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: CROSSOVER
Enrollment: 19
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to look at how insulin (a hormone that helps the cells get energy from sugar) in our body affects blood vessels (elasticity in the bigger blood vessels and blood flow in the smaller blood vessels in the arm) and how Metformin (a drug that makes you more sensitive to insulin) affects insulin's action on the blood vessels.

Detailed description:
In our protocol, we will study vascular function using pulse wave velocity (PWV) augmentation index (AI), flow mediated dilation (FMD) and contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEU) as well as insulin sensitivity (euglycemic clamp) in 50 adults with metabolic syndrome, age 18-60 years. They will each be studied 4 times,before and after two 12-wk interventions (randomly assigned) as follows: 1) Placebos and 2) Metformin . This is a cross-over design.

Arms:
arm 1: 12 weeks of Placebo tablet 3 x daily arm 2: 12 weeks of Metformin tablet 850 mg 3 x daily

Interventions: intervention 1: Placebos intervention 2: metformin
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: A 12 week single blind placebos intervention 2: A 12 week single blind metformin

Protocol document: