Abstract
The incidence of diabetes is on the rise and one of the medically active plants used for the treatment of diabetes in South Africa is Lauridia tetragona. The aim of this study is to investigate the antidiabetic property of the polyphenolics (PP) compounds isolated from the methanolic extract of Lauridia tetragona. The α-amylase, α-glucosidase, dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV), lipase inhibitory activities, and glucose uptake in HepG2 were investigated. The methanolic extract fractions of L. tetragona yielded six fractions (PP1–PP6) all of which showed weak inhibition against DPPIV and lipase compared to the standards. However, PP4 and PP6 showed the best inhibition against α-amylase (IC50 of 359.3 ± 2.11 and 416.82 ± 2.58 μg/mL, respectively) and α-glucosidase (IC50 of 95.93 ± 2.34 and 104.49 ± 2.21 μg/mL, respectively) and only PP4 (173.6%) resulted in enhanced glucose uptake in HepG2 cells compared to berberine (129.89%) and metformin (187.16%) used as positive controls. The previous investigation on PP4 and PP6 showed the presence of polyphenolics such as ferulic acid, coumaric acid, and caffeic acid. The results of this study suggest that L. tetragona could be suitable as an antidiabetic agent and justifies the folkloric use of the plant to treat diabetes.
Highlights
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic and serious metabolic disease that is characterized by the imbalance in glucose homeostasis leading to raised blood glucose
The incidence of undiagnosed diabetes in Africa is even higher at 69.2%, indicating that diabetes is emerging as a serious health concern in countries such as South Africa where high rates of maternal and child mortality, injury-related disorders, non-communicable diseases, and infectious diseases make available resources limited to meet the high cost of managing diabetes [4]
The methanolic extract of L. tetragona leaves was successively fractionated before each fraction was investigated for α-amylase, α-glucosidase, and dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV) inhibitory activities
Summary
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic and serious metabolic disease that is characterized by the imbalance in glucose homeostasis leading to raised blood glucose. In the two major categories of diabetes, type 2 is the most prevalent as it accounts for around 90% of all cases of diabetes [1]. 50% of diabetes cases in the world are undiagnosed because those living with the disease are unaware of their condition and the majority of these cases are from low-income and middle-income countries [4]. The incidence of undiagnosed diabetes in Africa is even higher at 69.2%, indicating that diabetes is emerging as a serious health concern in countries such as South Africa where high rates of maternal and child mortality, injury-related disorders, non-communicable diseases, and infectious diseases make available resources limited to meet the high cost of managing diabetes [4]. Studies using extracts from plants have shown potential in improving diabetes following a significant improvement in glucose uptake [5,6,7,8,9]
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