A Review on Therapeutic Effects of Benfotiamine in the Improvement of Vascular Complications of Diabetic Patients

Various pathogenesis and daily increase in number of diabetic patients, emphasizes the necessity of finding new therapeutic methods. Nowadays, physicians focus on controlling the blood sugar, although the protections against diabetic complications like: retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy are being ignored. Many studies on diabetic patients show the risk of low level of vitamin B1 (thiamine) which is a cofactor of the majority of enzymes of the carbohydrates-metabolisms pathways with the help of magnesium. Today some of lipid-soluble thiamine derivatives such as benfotiamine function better than thiamine itself. Clinical Studies in Europe and America showed hopeful results of improving microvascular and macrovascular complications of diabetes. Therefore the aim of this study is to review the effectiveness of benfotiamine on lowering the secondary diabetes complications.
The study is done by searching the English and Persian databases like: Pubmed, Scopus, Proquest, Google scholar, SID, Magiran and Iranmedex with the terms: benfotiamine, thiamine, diabetes, retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy between the years 1954 till 2015. Among 80 related articles, 60 with the full text access were included.
Benfotiamine blocks many harmful hyperglycemia-pathway like: hexosamine pathway, AGE formation, PKC activation, NF-κB; though it increases the activation of transketolase enzyme. Thus benfotiamine is a good therapeutic option.
Due to prescribing benfotiamine as a cure for diabetes by European physicians for decades and its positive effects in the improvement of diabetes complications, so further studies by counting the Iranian life style and other elements like climate and genetics are recommended.