Treatment strategies against diabetes: Success so far and challenges ahead

The growing disease burden of diabetes mellitus is an important public health concern, affecting over 400 million people globally. This epidemic, if not controlled in time, leads to life threatening complications, compromise in quality of life, and eventually mortality. Over time, many attempts have been made for the effective treatment of diabetes but true success has never been achieved. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches for the treatment of hyperglycaemia have been ever-evolving due to limitations of current therapies. Non pharmacological management which includes diet management and exercise, has been the primary focus for self-management of diabetes. The pharmacological management includes oral antihyperglycaemics, phyto-constituents, and combination products. Advancements such as nanocarrier delivery systems have been made in drug delivery to overcome the challenges such as poor bioavailability associated with conventional dosage forms currently employed in diabetes treatment. In recent years, much emphasis has been given to synbiotics that act on gut microbiota, as an emerging therapy for diabetes. The current review discusses different treatment strategies for diabetes management starting from insulin therapy to synbiotics. The combination of herbal phyto-constituents with synthetic drugs, synthetic drug combinations, novel drug delivery systems for insulin are highlighted. Moreover, the role of gut dysbiosis in diabetes and its treatment by administration of synbiotics in various clinical as well as non clinical studies has been discussed in detail.