Antidiabetic therapeutics from natural source: A systematic review

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common metabolic/endocrine disorder throughout the world and cause serious medical problems to human health. Recent drastic changes over human dietary habits and contemporary lifestyle lead to various chronic disorders/diseases particularly metabolic diseases including obesity. Traditional medicinal plants and their active phyto-constituents have been used throughout the world for the therapy of diabetes and associated secondary complications. Among many medications and other alternative medicines, numerous herbs have been well-known to cure and prevent diabetes. Several traditionally important medicinal plants have been investigated for their beneficial use in different types of diabetes and its complications. The effects of these plants may delay the development of diabetic complications and alter the metabolic abnormalities using a variety of cellular and molecular mechanisms. A considerable number of active medicinal plants and their bioactive compounds were subjected to clinical trials and were found effective. Moreover, during the past few years many phyto-constituents responsible for antidiabetic effects have been isolated from plants showed higher potential than synthetic drugs. As a result, recently, considerable scientific attention has been directed towards classification/identification of traditional medicinal plants with antihyperglycemic ability that may be used for daily consumption along with the food. This review paper mainly focuses on natural phytoextracts with their pharmacological mechanism of action and their preclinical experimental model, which attracts the attention of pharmacologist, phytochemist and pharmocognosist for further scientific research towards endocrine metabolic disorder.