Momordica charantia and Type 2 Diabetes: From in vitro to Human Studies

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes is a growing health problem worldwide that is particularly severe in India and China. In these areas, bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) is a popular vegetable which is traditionally known to have health beneficial effects not only, but mainly, on diabetes. Bitter gourd could be a cheap possibility to help the poor in these and other countries to control their blood glucose levels. This review describes anti-diabetic effects of bitter gourd reported in the literature and discusses what still needs to be clarified for developing an evidence-based and safe use of the bitter gourd for diabetes. Analyses of bioactive compounds have shown that bitter gourd is rich in nutrients and phytochemicals of which some have anti-diabetic effects. Juices, powders, extracts, and isolated compounds have been tested in vitro and in vivo. Bitter gourd increases insulin secretion of the pancreas, decreases intestinal glucose uptake, and increases uptake and utilization of glucose in peripheral tissues. Although human studies with type 2 diabetics are weak in their design and/or results, some of the studies do indicate anti-diabetic effects in patients and safety for bitter gourd treatment in humans. In the future, well designed studies with rodents will help to understand what kind of bitter gourd variety, dosage, preparation, and duration of administration is optimal. Such results will help to design human studies which are necessary to prove the effectiveness of bitter gourd in patients.

A UPLC–MS/MS approach for simultaneous determination of eight flavonoids in rat plasma, and its application to pharmacokinetic studies of Fu‐Zhu‐Jiang‐Tang tablet in rats

“…Fu‐Zhu‐Jiang‐Tang (FZJT) tablet, which consists of six well‐known traditional Chinese medicines – Pueraria lobata (PL), Morus alba (MA), Panax notoginseng (PN), Astragalus membranaceus (AM), Momordica charantia (MC) and Cortex lycii (CL) – has been proven to show beneficial effects on patients with type II diabetes. A number of articles have been published on the traditional use of the six individual herbs for the treatment of diabetes (Habicht, Ludwig, Yang, & Krawinkel, ; Li, Wang, Xue, Gu, & Lin, ; Ulbricht et al, ; Uzayisenga, Ayeka, & Wang, ; Zhang, Pugliese, Pugliese, & Passantino, ). For instance, the nonanthocyanin phenolics of MA known to date are rutin, quercetin and 2‐caffeoylquinic acid isomers, which exhibit anti‐diabetic effects through inhibition of α ‐glucosidase (Zhang, Han, He, & Duan, ).…”

Traditional Herbal Medicine in Mesoamerica: Toward Its Evidence Base for Improving Universal Health Coverage

“…Momordica charantia L. Antidiabetic: while a number of preclinical and clinical studies suggest antidiabetic activity (Habicht et al, 2014), the four RCTs standing up to the quality criteria of a recent Cochrane review found limited efficacy in glycaemia control, the risk of bias being high in all four studies (Ooi et al, 2012). A newer systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating 10 clinical studies, however, concluded that different M. charantia preparations improved glycemic control in T2DM patients but based on low quality evidence for the primary outcomes (Peter et al, 2019) A placebo-controlled, double-blind trial with T2DM patients showed that the application of 2,000 mg dried fruit pulp/d over 3 months decreased a range of parameters associated with diabetes such as BW, BMI, waist circumference, fat percentage, glycated hemoglobin A1c, 2-h glucose in the oral glucose tolerance test and glucose in parallel to an increase in insulin secretion (Cortez-Navarrete et al, 2018).…”

Skin Wound Healing: From Mediterranean Ethnobotany to Evidence based Phytotherapy

“…It is also used as an antioxidant, antispasmodic, anticholinergic and antiulcerogenic agent to treat gastric and malignant ulcers (Wu et al, 2007;Ozbakis Dengiz et al, 2005). Today, the antidiabetic properties of M charantia are being largely studied and confirmed (Habicht et al, 2014).…”