Investigations Towards New Antidiabetic Drugs from Fungal Endophytes Associated with Salvadora Oleoides Decne

The nature has provided abundant natural resources which can be explored for their medicinal uses. The present study was undertaken to investigate the antidiabetic and hypolipidemic activity of various extract’s fractions obtained from mycelia of seventeen endophytic fungi in different solvents (methanol, acetone and aqueous) isolated from Salvadora oleoides Decne (Salvadoraceae) in glucose loaded fasting and alloxan induced diabetic Wistar albino rats. Only four extracts namely; unidentified fungus (aqueous), Aspergillus sp.JPY2 (methanol), Aspergillus sp.JPY1 (methanol) and Phoma sp. (acetone) significantly reduced blood glucose levels as revealed by glucose tolerance test. It has been observed that in alloxan induced diabetic rats, the maximum reduction in blood glucose level was after 5 hours in the acute treatment experiment and on14^th day in sub acute treatment at a dose of 250mg/kg of body weight (P<0.05). The reduction in blood glucose in long term treatment experiment was ranged from 11.3% to 28.04%, whereas standard drug tolbutamide reduced the blood glucose level up to 40%. In long term treatment, unidentified fungus (aqueous) extract showed significant improvement in parameters like body weight and lipid profile of alloxan induced diabetic rats. The gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GCMS) analysis of bioactive fraction (aqueous) of unidentified fungus and methanolic extract fraction of Aspergillus sp.JPY1 revealed that the main constituents were 2, 6-di-tert-butyl-p-cresol and Phenol, 2, 6-bis (1, 1-dimethylethyl)-4-methyl respectively. The results have also suggested that the above four bioactive fractions have good margin of safety and did not show any lethal effects on the animals up to the doses of 1000mg/kg b.w. along with safe doses up to 500 μg/ ml to human erythrocytes.