Abstract
Diabetes mellitus is a public health problem which leads to serious complications over time. Experimentally, many herbs have been recommended for treating diabetes. In most cases, however, the recommendations are based on animal studies and limited pieces of evidence exist about their clinical usefulness. This review focused on the herbs, the hypoglycemic actions of which have been supported by three or more clinical studies. The search was done in Google Scholar, Medline and Science Direct databases using the key terms diabetes, plants, herbs, glucose and patients. According to the clinical studies, Aegle marmelos, Allium cepa, Gymnema sylvestre, Momordica charantia, Ocimum sanctum, Nigella sativa, Ocimum sanctum, Panax quinquefolius, Salacia reticulate, Silybum marianum and Trigonella foenum-graecum have shown hypoglycemic and, in some cases, hypolipidemic activities in diabetic patients. Among them, Gymnema sylvestre, Momordica charantia, Silybum marianum and Trigonella foenum-graecum have acquired enough reputation for managing diabetes. Thus, it seems that physicians can rely on these herbs and advise for the patients to improve management of diabetes.
Highlights
Diabetes mellitus is a growing public health problem in both developed and developing countries
Treatment of type-2 diabetes (T2D) patients with a G. sylvestre-based product (1 g/day for 2 months) led to significant decreases in fasting blood glucose (FBG) and postprandial blood glucose (PPBG) levels which were accompanied by increases in circulating insulin and C-peptide
Among hundreds of plants that have been studied for diabetes, only a small fraction has been tested in animal studies and is under clinical trials
Summary
Diabetes mellitus is a growing public health problem in both developed and developing countries. It is estimated that 3.4 million patients died from diabetes-related complications in 2004. Without urgent action, this number is likely to double by 2030. Over time, both types of diabetes lead to serious complications in the body, which include nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular diseases (Deshpande et al, 2008; Ghorbani et al, 2010). Early onset complications of diabetes can be controlled by oral hypoglycemic drugs/insulin treatment, serious late onset complications emerge in many patients (Tzoulaki et al, 2009). The current review focused on the medicinal plants, the hypoglycemic actions of which have been supported by different clinical studies on diabetic patients
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