Effect of thymoquinone on vitamin D metabolism in glucocorticoid-induced insulin resistance.

OBJECTIVES

The key ingredient in , thymoquinone (TQ), has several beneficial (antioxidant and anti-inflammatory) properties. This study aimed to investigate the vitamin D metabolism in insulin resistance and the effects of TQ.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Male Wistar albino rats were used. TQ was administered as a therapy, and prophylaxis and treatment with metformin were set up for the groups in which insulin resistance had been developed. The gene groups implicated in vitamin D metabolism underwent RT-PCR gene expression analysis and western blot protein analysis.

RESULTS

The analysis shows that the application of TQ reduced HOMA-IR (a sign of insulin resistance). The expression of the VDR gene may be responsible for TQ's effect on treating insulin resistance.

CONCLUSION

It has been demonstrated that using TQ for therapeutic and preventive reasons is advantageous for improving insulin resistance metrics. Serum vitamin D level was also found to be impacted, which was found to be directly related to the expression of several genes involved in vitamin D metabolism in the liver. However, some of these genes were found to be relatively ineffective in the present study.