Plants with Anti-Diabetes Mellitus Properties PDF

Preface

Diabetes mellitus is an age-old disease; it is described in ancient medical systems. From time immemorial, plant products have been used, to a large extent, to treat diabetes. Even today, the majority of the world’s population uses botanicals in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. It is one of the major diseases whose incidence and severity are increasing all over the world, and it presents a huge burden to society in terms of the economy and the well-being of people.

At present, unlike almost all other diseases, diabetes mellitus needs lifelong treatment, and the treatment, to a large extent, could provide a near-normal life. Although there are many oral medicines and injectible insulin to treat diabetes mellitus, they are inadequate and ineffective, particularly in the long run; adverse reactions and loss of efficacy occur. There are time-tested anti-diabetes mellitus plant foods that are very safe and could be effective when consumed judiciously with a concomitant change in lifestyle, which includes increase in physical activity and reduction in mental stress.

Various cultural groups around the world used and are using a large number of plants to treat diabetes mellitus; the number may be more than 2000. More than 1000 anti-diabetes mellitus ethnomedicinal plants have been subjected to varying levels of scientific studies. Out of these, about 120 plants are promising for further studies, leading to the development of medicines for diabetes mellitus.

Surprisingly, in spite of a vast and intensive traditional use of the plants to treat the disease and substantial supporting scientific studies, conventional chemical entity drugs from these plants were not successfully developed and commercialized, except metformin and sugar blockers such as acarbose. One of the major reasons is the following: In most cases, crude preparations of medicinal plants including decoctions, extracts, or fractions and poly-plant-formulations could be more successful as anti-diabetes mellitus medicines than single chemical entity drugs isolated from plants. Many such herbal medicines (crude preparations) are locally in use in alternative systems of medicine and folklore medicines. So, with this information in mind, one of the aims of this book is to facilitate the development of such medicines with modern standards of efficacy and safety and make them widely available.

One fact that emerged from the literature is that almost all of the promising anti-diabetes mellitus plants are endowed with various other pharmacological properties as well; in the majority of cases, these associated activities are beneficial. Further, more than one active principle is present in anti-diabetes mellitus plants. The search for anti-diabetes mellitus compounds brought to light the fact that already known bioactive phytochemicals with anti-diabetes mellitus activities, such as β-sitosterol, quercetin, rutin, ursolic acid, oleanolic acid, gallic acid, ellagic acid, kaempferol, ferulic acid and resveratol, are present in many plants, including certain food plants. There are certain plants with both anti-diabetes properties and toxicities. Another point noted in the literature is that a major part of scientific studies on extracts and fractions were carried out in academic institutions using a few common animal models such as alloxan-induced and streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. A good amount of such work is repetitious and superficial in nature. The identification of active principles (anti-diabetes mellitus phytochemicals) and unraveling the mechanism of action have not been done on some of the therapeutically promising anti-diabetes mellitus plants, including a few very important anti-diabetes mellitus food plants. This gap remains to be filled. Furthermore, a long-term and detailed toxicity evaluation is lacking in most of the cases. This is needed particularly when drug preparation is different from the traditional preparation and its use in traditional medicine is limited.

There are anti-diabetic molecules that are reported in phytochemical studies on many plants. Anti-diabetes mellitus properties of these compounds are reported from different plant sources in antidiabetes studies. Plants with very low levels of such compounds are not considered anti-diabetes mellitus plants in this book.

The occurrences of phytochemically different varieties of the same species (chemotypes), ecotypes, and variations due to soil nutrition, including water content in the soil, could affect the results obtained  in various studies using crude preparations and, in particular, extracts without extract standardization. Methods of processing and subsequent preparations of the extracts of plant materials could also influence bioactivity. This is one of the limitations in interpreting published experimental results.

The book begins with a detailed introduction on diabetes mellitus (Chapter 1). This is followed by an exhaustive compilation of information on the anti-diabetes mellitus activities of 1095 plants occurring across the world. In the case of most of the important anti-diabetes mellitus plants, brief botanical description, distribution, other pharmacological properties, and phytochemicals are provided; images of 101 important plants are provided. A partial list of traditional medicinal plants used to treat diabetes, but not tested for anti-diabetic activity, is also given. Chapter 3 highlights anti-diabetes mellitus plant foods along with a list of the edible parts of plants with anti-diabetes mellitus properties.

The author fervently hopes that this book will serve as a ready source for basic information on anti-diabetes mellitus medicinal plants and help researchers, students, doctors, and diabetic patients and others concerned about plant-based treatments for diabetes mellitus. Attempts have been made to include all anti-diabetes mellitus traditional plants subjected to at least one scientific study supporting the antidiabetes mellitus property. To facilitate ready reference, all plants are presented in alphabetical order based on their botanical names. This book is unique—the only one of its kind.