Metformin: A promising clinical therapeutical approach for BPH treatment via inhibiting dysregulated steroid hormones-induced prostatic epithelial cells proliferation.

"Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest."

"The work was supported by the 10.13039/100014717National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.: 81973377, 81903689, 82073906 and 82273987), the Key Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (Grant Nos.: 19KJB350006 and 19KJA460008), 10.13039/501100012246Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), the initializing Fund of 10.13039/501100012217Xuzhou Medical University (Grant No.: D2018011), and Postgraduate Research Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant Nos.: KYCX21-2733 and KYCX22-2966). Tingting Yang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Data curation, Writing - Original draft preparation, Reviewing and Editing; Jiayu Yuan: Data curation, Investigation, Project administration, Writing - Original draft preparation; Yuting Peng: Formal analysis, Data curation, Investigation, Project administration; Jiale Pang: Software, Investigation, Project administration, Validation; Zhen Qiu: Investigation, Project administration, Validation; Shangxiu Chen: Investigation, Project administration, Validation; Yuhan Huang: Software, Project administration; Zhenzhou Jiang: Investigation, Writing - Reviewing and Editing; Yilin Fan: Investigation, Methodology; Junjie Liu: Project administration; Tao Wang: Validation; Xueyan Zhou: Methodology, Visualization; Sitong Qian: Software, Visualization; Jinfang Song: Resources, Investigation, Project administration; Yi Xu: Project administration, Resources; Qian Lu: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - Reviewing and Editing; Xiaoxing Yin: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing - Reviewing and Editing."