Indian scientists find new anti-diabetic drugs from plant source

Indian scientists have found that a plant-derived substance called Chalcone can be used to make an effective anti-diabetic drug. Commercially available anti-diabetic drugs improve insulin sensitivity and reduce blood glucose levels. Scientists found that one such chalcone- aryloxypropanolamine works in the same manner. Chalcones, like flavonoids are ubiquitously found in many plants.

Patients with type-2 diabetes are unable to utilize sugars properly. After a meal, their blood glucose levels remain elevated for prolonged periods of time. Gradually, their muscles become insensitive to insulin, the hormone that converts unspent blood glucose into glycogen, which is stored in the liver. Since, the amount of glycogen also reduces with time, the patients develop cholesterol disorders. The levels of the beneficial HDL reduce in the blood, and the levels of harmful LDL increase. This makes diabetes a complex disorder.

Scientists report that treating muscle cells with chalcone improved glucose uptake. This makes chalcone particularly useful for diabetic patients. Since, their muscles are insensitive to insulin resulting in poor glucose uptake, chalcone can help manage diabetes by improving glucose uptake.

Further, to confirm the effects of chalcone on blood glucose, scientists used rats. Normal rats were fed with high sugar, after which their blood glucose levels were measured at regular intervals for up to a period of 6hours using a glucometer. They compared the effects of chalcone with commercial anti-diabetic drugs such as metformin, acarbose, pioglitazone, glybenclamide, janvuia, and galvus. They found that chalcone was as effective as other drugs in reducing blood glucose levels.

A similar effect was seen in animal models of type2-diabetes also. “Chalcone significantly inhibited the rise of blood glucose in animals and brought back the glucose levels to normal much earlier than commercial anti-diabetic drugs. Diabetic mice showed a decrease in total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol levels, and increased serum HDL-cholesterol like those of commercial anti-diabetic drugs”, claim scientists. 

Chalcones continues to function in the body for almost a day. Labs all over the world use streptozotocin-injected mice to find newer anti-diabetic drugs. Streptozotocin is a chemical that kills pancreatic cells that make insulin. These mice have low levels of insulin, and high blood glucose, making them near-perfect disease models of diabetes. “We found that all commercial anti-diabetic drugs and chalcone inhibited the rise in blood glucose in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats between 0 to 5hours, and the effect persisted till 24hours”, say scientists.

In addition to its efficacy, animal studies confirmed that chalcone is non-toxic and safe. It is stable under human stomach-like conditions, invigorating its potential as a good drug.

“The chalcone compound offers a promising lead for development as a drug for the management of type-2 diabetes mellitus”, say scientists at the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The results were published in a recent issue of Current Science. 

The research team comprised of Poonam Shukla, Mavurapu Satyanarayana, Prem C. Verma, Jaya Tiwari, Atma P Dwivedi, Rohit Srivastava, Neha Rehuja, Swayam P Srivastava, Sudeep Gautam, Akhilesh K Tamrakar, Anil K Dwivedi, Hari N. Kushwaha, Nagsen Gautam, Shio K Singh, Mukesh Srivastava, Chandishwar Nath, Ram Raghubir, Arvind K Srivastava, and Ram Pratap. 

This story was published by Down to Earth and India Science Wire. 

Reference: Current Science 112 (8): 1675-1689.