Ethnopharmacological perspectives of glucokinase activators in the treatment of diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Traditional medicinal plants have wide-reaching utilisation in the treatment of diabetes especially in developing countries where medical resources are meagre. Traditionally used anti-diabetic plants act by numerous mechanisms, however, only a few of them act through activation of the glucokinase enzyme. Glucokinase is a key regulatory enzyme in glucose metabolism thereby controls glucose homeostasis and insulin secretion. The present review significantly analyses the knowledge about various plant-based glucokinase activators including numerous phytochemicals which modulate the activity and gene expression of glucokinase and would provide data support and perspective regarding future research in the discovery and development of different plant-derived glucokinase activators.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Blood glucose
• diabetes
• glucokinase
• medicinal plants
• phytoconstituents

Acknowledgment

Moral and Educational support provided by the Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra under the Master Degree of Pharmacy for the year 2019-2020, is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.