Endocrine Abstracts

Traditional herbal medicine has been used for centuries to treat various chronic diseases – There have been some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the use of some of these herbal medicine may be both safe & efficacious in patients and laboratory animals with diabetes. Many patients with diabetes worldwide use some of these medicines without informing their caring physicians. PHS-E2 (Glucoherb) is a Chinese traditional herbal medicine, which is extracted from two medicinal plants named Dahuarg and Heshouwa. Which are originally used as vegetables. We tested the safety and efficacy of their agent after earlier studies in China suggested significant hypoglycemia properties. Diabetes was induced in 26 out of 30 Wister rats following streptozotocin i.p as a dose rate of 60 mg/kg. Acute, sub acute and chronic toxicity were tested in these animals. Also the efficacy of this agent improving hypoglycemia was compared with control and with the oral hypoglycemic agent glibenclamide. In acute, subacute and chronic toxicity studies, no difference in weight of the experimental animals occur, nor there was any significant change in level, of aspartate aminotrasferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and bilirubin between actively treated rats and control group. There was significant improvement in level of blood glucose at various dosage of glucoherb (7 mg/kg, 15 mg/kg and 25 mg/kg) comparable to the effect of glibenclamide (dose 0.6 mg/kg).

These results suggest that PHS-E2 (Glucoherb) is both safe and efficacious in STZ diabetic Wistar rats. This outcome is awaited to be reproduced from human studies which is currently is underway.