Abstract
Gymnema sylvestre is a plant included in Apocynaceae family and is located in many regions of Asia, Africa and Australia. This plant is widely used as a traditional therapy for different purposes. Even now it is being used as a dietary supplement due to its numerous therapeutic uses. It is known to have blood glucose lowering potential and, thus, is widely used in traditional and Ayurvedic systems of medicine. It renders glucose lowering activity due to the presence of phytochemicals, such as gurmarin, gymnemic acid as well as gymnemasaponins. Gymnema sylvestre is also known to have anti-oxidant, antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, gastro and hepatoprotective, anticancer and lipid-lowering activities. This review discusses in details on different pharmacological and clinical potentials of Gymnema sylvestre and its chemical constituents associated with its therapeutic potentials.
Highlights
Plants are a great concern for drug discovery exploration and a major source of our modern medicine
Natural plants, herbal medicines, phytomedicines, and functional foods are extensively studied by scientists all over the world which resulted with the lucrative therapeutic potentials such as antidiabetic (Sarker, 2015; Shah et al, 2016; Rouhi et al, 2017; Chen et al, 2018), anticancer (Sheikh et al, 2017a; Sheikh et al, 2017b), immunomodulating (Goto et al, 2010; Sarker et al, 2011; Sarker et al, 2012a; Sarker et al, 2012b; Sarker and Gohda, 2013), antiobesity and lipid lowering (Kazemipoor et al, 2015; Sarker, 2015), anti-inflammatory (Imam et al, 2013) and anti-bacterial (Yasmin et al, 2009) activies
In another study, where 64 individuals with type 1 diabetes were treated with Gymnema leaf extract for 6 to 30 months resulted with the reduction of plasma glucose level, reduced external insulin dose and significant reduction in HbA1c (p < 0.001) (Shanmugasundaram et al, 1990b)
Summary
Plants are a great concern for drug discovery exploration and a major source of our modern medicine. It is a wild herb found in India, Africa, Australia, and China (Christopoulos et al, 2010) It is known as Meshashringi, Merasingi, Kavali, Kalikardori, Vakundi, Dhuleti, Mardashingi, Podapatri, Adigam, Cherukurinja, Sannagerasehambu, Chigengteng or Australian Cowplant, Waldschlinge in German, Periploca of the woods in English (Kanetkar et al, 2007). Gymnema sylvestre is reported to be effective against arthritis, diuretic, anemia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolemia, cardiopathy, asthma, constipation, microbial infections, indigestion, and as an antiinflammatory agent (Tiwari et al, 2014) This plant has been proven valuable through its numerous useful properties, not many studies especially clinical studies on this plant are available. We aim to extensively review the therapeutic potential and phytochemical compounds present in this plant based on the published reports so far
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