Boron promotes the survival and the maintenance of β-cells in type i diabetes mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is worldwide disease. The life of diabetic patients are dependent on exogeneous insulin. Pancreas or particularly islet transplantations are performed for treatment to heal this disease. External substances are also used to achieve improvements in the healing process of the disease. In the current study, two different boron derivatives (boric acid-BA and sodium pentaborate pentahydrate-NaB) were investigated for their effect on pancreatic cells in terms of pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic markers, genes related to insulin production mechanism, pancreatic development and glucose metabolism, some antioxidant enzymes, and genes for the initiation of diabetes, insulin secretion and antioxidant enzyme activities in vitro. The results revealed that boron derivatives did not lead to apoptosis. On the contrary, they increased cell viability, antioxidant enzyme activities and insulin secretion in the gene level. Overall evaluation, data in the current study showed that boron derivatives might be promising therapeutic agents for type I diabetes. However, additional investigations are strictly needed to elucidate molecular mechanisms of boron derivatives.