A review on ameliorative green nanotechnological approaches in diabetes management

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder which results in increase of blood glucose level mainly due to insufficient insulin secretion or body fails to respond to secreted insulin from pancreatic cells. Diabetes is mainly the third cause of death worldwide after cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Nanotechnology is an emerging area in pharmaceutical sciences as nanoparticles are reported to increase the efficacy of drugs derived from plant resources by their target specific activity. The nanomaterials synthesized from plant resources have regulatory potential in control of certain diseases with minimum or no side effects. The review focuses on the reported antidiabetic potential of different metallic and other nanoparticles mainly silver, zinc oxide, gold, copper, selenium, chitosan and iron oxide, synthesized using different plant resources as various secondary metabolites like saponins, flavonoids, steroids, alkaloids, tannins. The green nanotechnological approach reported their antibiabetic potential as magic molecules in understanding various therapeutic processes and manipulated significantly regulatory mechanism/s pertaining to management of diabetes through pancreatic alpha-amylase, intestinal alpha-glucosidase, insulin action, glucose uptake in different in vivo and in vitro systems. The additional inputs of nanotechnological approaches regarding further exploration of herbal chemical potential may lead to consideration of certain novel magic drug molecules and may act as an advantage in management of diabetes for betterment of mankind.