Diabetes mellitus is a degenerative disease being responsible for about 1.5 million deaths globally. In Bangladesh, the stress of diabetes is on rising and resulting in serious health implications along with significant economic crisis. Due to undesirable and inherent side effects, researchers are now shifting from the conventional therapy and trying to prevent and manage diabetes through traditional medicine. World Health Organization (WHO) also recommends the practice of customary herbal medicine for diabetes management, and support and encourage the augmentation of research to evaluate the hypoglycemic properties of the diverse medicinal plant species. Consequently, in the current review, the antihyperglycemic potency of some Bangladeshi medicinal plants has been evaluated and verified utilizing human as well as experimental animals. The results elucidate the glucose-lowering effects of the plants via different cellular mechanisms, including restoration of pancreatic β-cell, controlling the action of carbohydrate metabolizing enzymes, enhancing peripheral glucose utilization, increase in muscle glycogen store as well as activation of the insulin signaling cascade. In summary, this work may invigorate the researchers for more specific and focused research to provide a better and broad understanding of the antihyperglycemic mechanism and can act as an effective tool for choosing the plants with robust potential for unbolting of novel antidiabetic agents.
Antidiabetic Potency of Bangladeshi Medicinal Plants