Abstract
Diabetes mellitus is one of the biggest public health concerns worldwide, which includes type 1 diabetes mellitus, type 2 diabetes mellitus, gestational diabetes mellitus, and other rare forms of diabetes mellitus. Accumulating evidence has revealed that intestinal microbiota is closely associated with the initiation and progression of diabetes mellitus. In addition, various dietary natural products and their bioactive components have exhibited anti-diabetic activity by modulating intestinal microbiota. This review addresses the relationship between gut microbiota and diabetes mellitus, and discusses the effects of natural products on diabetes mellitus and its complications by modulating gut microbiota, with special attention paid to the mechanisms of action. It is hoped that this review paper can be helpful for better understanding of the relationships among natural products, gut microbiota, and diabetes mellitus.
Highlights
Over the past 20 years, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and its complications has rapidly increased across the world, which poses a serious threat to global health [1,2,3]
The mouse β-defensin 14 in pancreatic endocrine cells in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice could prevent autoimmune diabetes, while the microbiota dysbiosis could induce the deficiency of the pancreatic expression of mBD14, which results in the higher incidence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) [91]
The abundance of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus as well as the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes decreased, while the abundance of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria increased in T1DM and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients
Summary
Over the past 20 years, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and its complications has rapidly increased across the world, which poses a serious threat to global health [1,2,3]. Many studies have shown that some natural products and their bioactive components could prevent and manage diabetes mellitus and its complications by several possible mechanisms, such as enhancing insulin action, ameliorating insulin resistance, activating insulin signaling pathway, protecting islet β-cells, scavenging free radicals, decreasing inflammation, and modulating gut microbiota [25,26,27,28,29]. We first address the relationship between gut microbiota and T1DM as well as T2DM based on animal and epidemiological studies, and discuss the effects of natural products on T2DM and its complications via modulation of gut microbiota, based on the literature from animal and clinical studies in the last five years (2015–2019). Increasing investigations have found that gut microbiota is closely associated with T1DM and T2DM patients [85,86,87], and they will be discussed in detail below
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