TNF and type 2 diabetes mellitus: 2005; El-Mir et al. 2008; Eriksson et al. 2012; Jung et al. 2012; Bhatt et al. 2013) and ameliorates functional defects, activation of caspases and apoptosis in pancreatic islets from type 2 diabetic patients (Marchetti et al. 2004). Furthermore, in a recent study, we demonstrated that metformin protects hepatocytes against bile acid-induced apoptosis, but not against TNFα-induced hepatocyte apoptosis (Woudenberg-Vrenken et al. 2013).