Endocrine Abstracts

Diabetes is one of the main health problems in the world, thus it is well worthwhile to explore alternate treatments made from natural extracts. Cnidoscolus chayamansa, is an endemic plant from the Southeastern of Mexico known for its easy and cheap growing requirements. C. chayamansa contains dihydromyricetin a flavonoid that is believed exerts hypoglycemic effects. We obtained a hydro-ethanolic extract from the leaves of C. chayamansa (EEC), optimized and standardized through fractionation. We administered a concentrated extract of ECC to diabetic rats and a diluted infusion made with the EEC to normal rats.

Diabetes was induced with a single intraperitoneal streptozotocin dose (60 mg/kg). We compared a standard oral treatment of metformin (MET) against the EEC. The diabetic animals were treated with EEC (n=5), metformin (MET) (n=5), or water (control) (n=3). The results indicated that after 4 weeks of treatment the blood glucose levels decreased about 50% in the diabetic group treated either with metformin or EEC showing no significant difference between EEC and MET. The data from the correlation analysis between glucose change and weight gain change showed no significant association in a non-diabetic group, whereas the MET and EEC diabetic groups retrieved significant association (P=0.003 and P=0.032 respectively). In this case, we can conclude that there is no difference between the actions of EEC and MET, nonetheless there were more blindness outcomes in the group with MET (n=4) than in EEC group (n=1). Another experiment using an infusion of only 2% ECC administered ad libitum and under high carbohydrate diet showed significant decreases in blood glucose (P=0.029) compared with control group, which were drinking water and the same diet.

These observations are enticing and prospective work will include the investigation on the gene expression related to glucose metabolism when the EEC is administered.