Abstract

FIGHTING DIABETES WITH HERBAL TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Seema Talreja, Chanchal Deep Kaur*

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, hyperaminoacidemia, and hypoinsulinaemia which leads to reduce in both insulin secretion and insulin action. It is often connected with the development of micro and macro vascular diseases which include a long term damage, dysfunction and failure of various organs especially the eye, nerves, heart, kidney and blood vessels. Various approaches have been developed for the treatment of diabetes, like insulin management and use of a variety of oral hypoglycemic agents but these synthetic drugs are costly and often associated with high chances of side effects. A wide number of medicinal plants are described in Ayurveda and traditional medicinal system which are used for the treatment of diabetes from ancient time. The present paper is an attempt to represent the list of the anti-diabetic plants, and their active constituents with a particular mechanism of action. The active principles present in medicinal plants have been reported to possess various activities such as pancreatic beta cell regeneration, stimulating insulin release, showing insulin-like action, fighting the problem of insulin resistance, and reducing the uptake, absorption and utilization of glucose. The recent development of herbal formulations for the treatment of diabetes include using combined extracts of the different plants or different parts of the same plants; development of novel targeted drug delivery systems etc. Perceived effectiveness, fewer side effects, controlled rate of drug release and targeted approaches are the recent areas of herbal technological developments.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Hyperglycemia, Insulin, Pancreatic beta cell, Herbal formulation.