Abstract:
Affecting more than half a billion people globally, T2DM usually instigates quietly through
mild insulin resistance and dyslipidemia, gradually leading the body towards more
advanced complications, such as retinopathy, peripheral angiopathy, nephropathy,
neuropathy, NAFLD, and diabetic foot disease, etc. For the management of these diabetic
complications, traditional herbal medicines with affirmative consequences have been in
use for centuries. Thus, in consideration of the antidiabetic potential of natural products,
the current study was designed to investigate the antidiabetic and antioxidant properties of
Z. officinale, A. sativum, M. charantia and a combination of the aforementioned medicinal
herbs by in silico and in vivo studies. Network pharmacology approach, employing the use
of PPI network formation was adapted to investigate the naturally occurring
phytochemicals of the medicinal plants pertaining drug like properties, which revealed that
quercetin (-9.7), rutin (-11.6), and ursodiol (-10.1) exhibit high binding affinities with
AKT1 protein.
For in vivo evaluation, seven groups of wistar rats were formed, and administered with
HFD and STZ for diabetes induction. Diabetic rats were then orally fed with ground forms
of medicinal plants for 42 days at a ratio of 1:100. Results obtained through experimental
analysis revealed that M. charantia treatment stabilized the body weights of the male and
female wistar rats and reduced their BGL up to almost 50 percent. Z. officinale and A.
sativum treatment decreased the blood glucose levels by as much as 30% and 33%
respectively. The lipid profile of the A. sativum-treated rats (P<0.0001) showed about 50%
improvement. However, the combination therapy reduced the free radical damage to
kidney and liver, as evident from histopathological and biochemical analyses in addition
to improvement of hyperglycemia (P<0.0001), and lipid profile (P<0.0001). From the
results, it can be concluded that the combinatorial therapy could be effectively used for the
management of micro and macrovascular complications of diabetes.
