Potential Therapeutic Benefits of Honey in Neurological Disorders: The Role of Polyphenols.

Honey is the principal premier product of beekeeping familiar to Homo for centuries. In every geological era and culture, evidence can be traced to the potential usefulness of honey in several ailments. With the advent of recent scientific approaches, honey has been proclaimed as a potent complementary and alternative medicine for the management and treatment of several maladies including various neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and multiple sclerosis, etc. In the literature archive, oxidative stress and the deprivation of antioxidants are believed to be the paramount cause of many of these neuropathies. Since different types of honey are abundant with certain antioxidants, primarily in the form of diverse polyphenols, honey is undoubtedly a strong pharmaceutic candidate against multiple neurological diseases. In this review, we have indexed and comprehended the involved mechanisms of various constituent polyphenols including different phenolic acids, flavonoids, and other phytochemicals that manifest multiple antioxidant effects in various neurological disorders. All these mechanistic interpretations of the nutritious components of honey explain and justify the potential recommendation of sweet nectar in ameliorating the burden of neurological disorders that have significantly increased across the world in the last few decades.

Attenuation of carbohydrate metabolism and lipid profile by methanolic extract of Euphorbia helioscopia and improvement of beta cell function in a type 2 diabetic rat model.

BACKGROUND: Traditional plant-based remedies prescribed to treat diabetes have shown promise in research-based setting. Current research was conducted to examine the antidiabetic and antioxidant effects of methanolic extract of a folk herbal plant Euphorbia helioscopia in a rat model of type 2 diabetes. METHODS: Diabetes was induced in male Wistar rats by administering 5% sucrose in drinking water and cafeteria diet for 8 weeks with subsequent nicotinamide and streptozotocin administration. Diabetic rats were then distributed into four individual groups (n = 8); Positive control (PC; no treatment), standard control (SC; Metformin @ 10 mg/kg bw), treatment 1 (EH1, E. helioscopia methanolic extract @200 mg/kg bw) and treatment 2 (EH2, E. helioscopia methanolic extract @400 mg/kg bw). After 21 days of treatments, the rats were decapitated for blood collection. Serum was evaluated for antidiabetic potential, antioxidant and lipid profile, thyroid hormone, amylin, leptin, and carbohydrate metabolic enzymes. Data were analyzed statistically by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS: Serum levels of glucagon, glucose and C-peptide were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) decreased in EH1 (1915.33 ± 98.26a pg/ml, 122.59 ± 2.99a mg/dl, 277.59 ± 28.41a pg/ml respectively) and EH2 (1575.28 ± 56.46a pg/ml, 106.04 ± 5.21a mg/dl, 395.06 ± 42.55a pg/ml respectively) as compared to the PC (3135.78 ± 189.46bpg/ml, 191.24 ± 17.75bmg/dl, 671.70 ± 109.75b pg/ml respectively) group. A similar trend was observed in serum insulin levels in EH1 and EH2 groups. The plant's methanolic extract effectively reduced the total oxidant status (TOS) and MDA levels in the diabetic rats and increased the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) along with an increased level of SOD, Catalase, Paraoxonase, and arylesterase. The plant extract also induced antihyperlipidemic activity and recovered the thyroid hormones, amylin, and leptin levels to normal. The activity of different carbohydrate metabolic enzymes like Pyruvate Kinase, Glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase, phosphofructokinase, and glucokinase has also been restored by the extract treatment. CONCLUSION: Current study indicates the antioxidant and antidiabetic potential of E. helioscopia methanolic extract in normalizing the lipid profile, thyroid hormones, amylin, leptin, and carbohydrate metabolism in type 2 diabetic rat model.

Efficacy of Euphorbia helioscopia in context to a possible connection between antioxidant and antidiabetic activities: a comparative study of different extracts.

BACKGROUND: Euphorbia helioscopia, conventionally known as sun spurge, has been used as a traditional medicine to treat different diseases owing to its reported antitumor, antiviral and antioxidant activities. METHODS: The current research was formulated to assess the in-vitro antioxidant and antidiabetic ability of Euphorbia helioscopia subsequent to the phytochemical analysis of its various extracts. For this purpose, methanol, ethanol and aqueous extracts were prepared using the whole dried plant. Phytochemical analysis of the extracts was done to evaluate the total flavonoid components (TFC) and total phenolic components (TPC) in the extracts. A total of seven phenolic and three flavonoid contents were documented and quantified using HPLC. Antioxidant values were found by DPPH● assay, FRAP and ABTS assays. The antidiabetic potential of the extracts was evaluated by measuring the inhibition ability of the activity of enzymes α amylase and α glucosidase. RESULTS: After analyzing statistically, the results showed that methanolic extract possesses the highest TFC and TPC values while aqueous extract encompassed the lowest level of these contents. Invitro results showed that methanolic extract of the Euphorbia helioscopia has the maximum antioxidant capability since it showed the highest scavenging ability towards the DPPH● (IC50 value = 0.06 ± 0.02 mg/ml), FRAP (758.9 ± 25.1 µMFe+ 2/g), and ABTS (689 ± 25.94 µMTEq/g) due to the presence of high TPC (24.77 ± 0.35 mgGAEq/g) and TFC (17.95 ± 0.32 mgQEq/g) values. Antidiabetic activity in terms of inhibition potential of α amylase and α glucosidase activity was also observed maximum in methanolic extract having lowest IC50 value (0.4 ± 0.01 mg/ml and 0.45 ± 0.01 mg/ml respectively) and minimum in the aqueous extract (IC50 value = 0.57 ± 0.02 mg/ml and 0.76 ± 0.1 mg/ml respectively). CONCLUSION: The experiment outcomes have shown that Euphorbia helioscopia extracts used in the current study contain antioxidant and antidiabetic activities; however, it is highest in its methanolic extract. The presence of the same trend towards the highest antidiabetic activity of the methanolic extract in terms of maximum inhibiting activity of α amylase and α glucosidase enzymes suggests a close association of TFC and TPC in minimizing diabetes.