Background:
Diabetes and hypertension are the major health concern and alleged to be
of epidemic proportions. This has made it a numero uno subject at various levels of investigation.
Glucosidase inhibitor provides the reasonable option in treatment of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) as it
specifically targets post prandial hyperglycemia. The Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) plays
an important role in hypertension. Therefore, inhibition of ACE in treatment of elevated blood pressure
attracts special interest of the scientific community. Chickpea is a food legume and seeds contain
carbohydrate binding protein- a lectin. Some of the biological properties of this lectin hitherto
been elucidated.
Methods:
Purified by ion exchange chromatography, chickpea lectin was tested for its in vitro antioxidant,
ACE-I inhibitory and anti-diabetic characteristic.
Results:
Lectin shows a characteristic improvement over the synthetic drugs like acarbose (oral
anti-diabetic drug) and captopril (standard antihypertensive drug) when, their IC50 values are
compared. Lectin significantly inhibited α-glucosidase and α-amylase in a concentration dependent
manner with IC50 values of 85.41 ± 1.21 ҝg/ml and 65.05 ± 1.2 µg/ml compared to acarbose
having IC50 70.20 ± 0.47 value of µg/ml and 50.52 ± 1.01 µg/ml respectively. β-Carotene
bleaching assay showed antioxidant activity of lectin (72.3%) to be as active as Butylated Hydroxylanisole
(BHA). In addition, lectin demonstrated inhibition against ACE-I with IC50 value of 57.43
± 1.20 µg/ml compared to captopril.
Conclusion:
Lectin demonstrated its antioxidant character, ACE-I inhibition and significantly inhibitory
for α-glucosidase and α-amylase seems to qualify as an anti-hyperglycemic therapeutic
molecule. The biological effects of chickpea lectin display potential for reducing the parameters
of medically debilitating conditions. These characteristics however needs to be established
under in vivo systems too viz. animals through to humans.
