Abstract
The purpose of this review is to summarize the available antidiabetic medicinal plants in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with its phytoconstituents and toxicological findings supporting by the latest literature. Required data about medicinal plants having antidiabetic activities and growing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were searched/collected from the online databases including Wiley, Google, PubMed, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. Keywords used in search are in vivo antidiabetic activities, flora of Saudi Arabia, active ingredients, toxicological evaluations, and medicinal plants. A total of 50 plant species belonging to 27 families were found in the flora of Saudi Arabia. Dominant family was found Lamiaceae with 5 species (highest) followed by Moraceae with 4 species. β-Amyrin, β-sitosterol, stigmasterol, oleanolic acid, ursolic acid, rutin, chlorogenic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol are the very common bioactive constituents of these selected plant species. This paper has presented a list of antidiabetic plants used in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. Bioactive antidiabetic phytoconstituents which showed that these plants have hypoglycemic effects and highly recommended for further pharmacological purposes and to isolate/identify antidiabetes mellitus (anti-DM) active agents also need to investigate the side effects of active ingredients.
Highlights
Medicinal plants are used for the treatment of different infections [1, 2]. ese plants contributed as a source of inspiration for novel therapeutic compounds [3]. e medicinal value of plants is due to the presence of a wide variety of secondary metabolites including alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, volatile oil, and terpenoids [4, 5]
Keywords used in search are in vivo antidiabetic activities, flora of Saudi Arabia, active ingredients, toxicological evaluations, and medicinal plants
Hypoglycemic effects of C. intybus were observed in diabetic rats, and a dose of 125 mg of plant extract/kg body weight exhibited the most potent hypoglycemic effect [43,44,45] e aqueous extract of Clitoria ternatea leaves and flower administered for 84 days to diabetic rats significantly decreased blood glucose [46,47,48] Different extracts and fractions of F. carica showed a clear hypoglycemic effect in diabetic rats
Summary
Medicinal plants are used for the treatment of different infections [1, 2]. ese plants contributed as a source of inspiration for novel therapeutic compounds [3]. e medicinal value of plants is due to the presence of a wide variety of secondary metabolites including alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, volatile oil, and terpenoids [4, 5]. Plants are the primary source for different pharmaceutical, perfumery, flavor, and cosmetics industries; the use of modern drugs dramatically resulted into resistant microorganisms toward different modern drugs; the researchers are in search for alternate source of treatment of various disorders [7, 8]. For this purpose, the medicinal herbs are the best alternate to various drugs. According to 2010 data from several sources (WHO, World Bank, UNESCO, CIA, and individual country databases), DM is the number three disease-related cause of death in Saudi Arabia [34]. Keeping in mind the importance of medicinal plants, in the current review various medicinal plants used for antidiabetic treatment around the world, native to or cultivated in Saudi Arabia, are documented for the purpose to provide up-todate insight on medicinal plant used for DM, so that researcher selects plant for bioscreening and active constituents’ identification purposes. erefore, we invite researchers’ attention to carry out detailed ethnopharmacological and toxicological studies on unexplored antidiabetic plants in order to provide reliable knowledge to the patients and develop novel antidiabetic drugs
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