Current Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2015

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most serious diseases in the world. The levels of glycated proteins in the blood of diabetics are higher than that of non-diabetic subjects. The glycation of proteins is believed to link to the occurrence of diabetic complications and related diseases. This review focuses on the influence of glycation of human serum albumin (HSA) on its structure and function. The glycation leads to change the HS Read More

Currently, experimental and clinical evidences showed that polyphenols-rich natural products, like nutraceuticals and food supplements, may offer unique treatment modalities in type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), due to their biological properties. Natural products modulate the carbohydrate metabolism by various mechanisms, such as restoring beta-cells integrity and physiology, enhancing insulin releasing activity, and the gl Read More

Significant evidence suggests that polyphenol-rich diets have the ability to protect against diabetes. Since several previous reviews focused on the nutrition and health effects including type 2 diabetes of polyphenols in 2007-2008, a number of related original publications have been pulished in this field. This review summarizes important advances related to influence of dietary polyphenols and polyphenol-rich diets on preventin Read More

This review focuses on the role of procyanidins, the main group of flavonoids, on type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and insulin resistance. We compile the role of procyanidins on several animal models, and we evaluate their effects on target tissues and analyze the mechanisms involved. Procyanidin treatments in fructose or high-fat induced insulin resistant models were found to improve the damage induced by the diet, t Read More

Diabetic retinopathy is one of the most common complications of diabetes. A plethora of literature indicates that oxidative stress may play a central role in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. One could thus hypothesise that antioxidant therapies may be protective for diabetic retinopathy. Anthocyanins are important natural bioactive pigments responsible for red-blue colour of fruits, leaves, seeds, stems and fl Read More

Epidemiological studies demonstrate robust correlations between green tea consumption and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and its cardiovascular complications. However, underlying molecular, cellular, and physiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Health promoting actions of green tea are often attributed to epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), the most abundant polyphenol in green tea. Insulin resistance and e Read More

The beneficial effects of green tea have been confirmed in various diseases, such as different types of cancer, heart disease, and liver disease. The effective components of green tea mainly include tea polysaccharides and tea polyphenols, such as catechin, particularly (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Increasing in vivo and in vitro evidences have explored the potential molecular mechanisms of green tea as well as the specific Read More

Results of several epidemiological studies have indicated that diabetes mellitus will become a global epidemic in the next decades, being more than 400 million the human subjects in the world affected by this disease in the 2030. Most of these subjects will be affected by type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) whose diffusion is mainly related to excessive caloric upload, sedentary life and obesity. Typically, the treatment for T2DM is diet, Read More

Polyphenols are members of a very large family of plant-derived compounds that may have beneficial effects on human health, and thus their study has become an increasingly important area of human nutrition research. Considering that it is increasingly accepted that chronic sub-acute inflammation plays an important role in the development of insulin resistance and of diabetes in animals and in humans, the aim of the Read More

Flavonoids are well known as antibacterial agents against a wide range of pathogenic microorganism. With increasing prevalence of untreatable infections induced by antibiotic resistance bacteria, flavonoids have attracted much interest because of the potential to be substitutes for antibiotics. In this review, the structure-relationship of flavonoids as antibacterial agents is summarized, and the recent advancements o Read More

During the last years, the list of resveratrol effects has grown in parallel with the number of other members of the polyphenol family described to modulate glucose or lipid handling. In the same time, more than ten human studies on the influence of resveratrol supplementation on two related metabolic diseases, obesity and diabetes, have indicated that impressive beneficial effects co-exist with lack of demonstration of clinical Read More