PRKAA1 and metabolic syndrome: Medications such as metformin that indirectly activate AMPK have been used by humans for decades, and a number of AMPK activators and inhibitors are being developed by academic laboratories and the pharmaceutical industry for various diseases, including diabetes, metabolic syndrome, mitochondrial abnormalities, and neurodegeneration, as well as for research purposes [121,122,123,124,125,126,127].