Protective effects of medicinal plant against diabetes induced cardiac disorder: A review

Ethnopharmacology relevance: Nowadays, there is an increase in global tendency to use medicinal plants as preventive and therapeutic agents to manage diabetes and its long-term complications such as cardiovascular disorders owing to their availability and valuable traditional background. Aim of study: This review aims to introduce common medicinal plants, which have been demonstrated to have cardioprotective effects on diabetes and their mechanisms of action. Materials and methods: Online literature databases, including Web of Sciences, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus and Google Scholar were searched without date limitation by May 2020. The following keywords (natural products or medicinal plants or herbal medicine or herb or extract) and (diabetes or antidiabetic or hyperglycemic) and (cardiomyopathy or heart or cardioprotective or cardiac or cardio) were used, and after excluding non-relevant articles, 81 original English articles were selected. Results: The surveyed medicinal plants induced cardioprotective effects mostly through increasing antioxidant effects leading to attenuating ROS production as well as by inhibiting inflammatory signaling pathways and related cytokines. Moreover, they ameliorated the Na+/K + ATPase pump, the L-type Ca-2(+) channel current, and the intracellular ATP. They also reduced cardiac remodeling and myocardial cell apoptosis through degradation of caspase-3, Box, P53 protein, enhancement of Bcl-2 protein expression as well as downregulation of TGF beta 1 and TNF alpha expression. In addition, the extracts improved cardiac function through increasing EF% and FS% as well as restoring hemodynamic parameters. Conclusions: The reviewed medicinal plants demonstrated cardioprotective manifestations in diabetes through intervention with mechanisms involved in the diabetic heart to restore cardiovascular complications.

Automated summary

This study reviewed 81 original English articles on the cardioprotective effects of medicinal plants in diabetes, finding that these plants mainly exert cardioprotective effects through increasing antioxidant effects, inhibiting inflammatory signaling pathways and related cytokines to reduce cardiac remodeling and myocardial cell apoptosis.