Antidiabetic effect of Moringa oleifera in alloxan induced diabetic rat

Abstract

Oral anti-diabetic agents have a number of serious adverse effects, thus, managing diabetes without any side effects is still a major challenge. Therefore, the search for many effective and safer hypoglycemic agents from herbal plants are being considered as an important area of investigation. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of Moringa oleifera (MO) on blood glucose levels, serum total cholesterol, hematological parameters, body weight and histopathological assessment of different organs in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. The rats were divided into 3 equal groups, each containing 15 individuals as follows: normal control (C) group, diabetic control (DC) group and diabetic treatment (DT) group. Diabetes was induced in diabetic control (DC) and diabetic treatment (DT) group with alloxan @ 200mg/kg body weight intra-peritoneal. Diabetes was induced in diabetic control (DC) and diabetic treatment (DT) group with alloxan @ 200mg/kg body weight Key Words: Moringa, antidiabetic, rat, kidney, pancreas intraperitonially. Then DT group was treated with aqueous extract of MO @150 mg/kg body weight. After 42 days of treatment, MO extract reduced the amount of blood glucose significantly (p<0.001) in the group DT compared to DC from 31.41 ± 0.44 to 16.61 ± 0.33 mmol/L. Total cholesterol (TC) was lowered significantly (p<0.01) in DT compared to DC from 154.122 ± 3.41 to 108.489 ± 0.31mg/dL. In hematological study, DT group showed significant (p<0.001) elevation of erythrocyte count and demotion (p<0.01) of leukocyte count after 42 days of treatment in contrast with DC group. The body weight was also increased significantly (p<0.001) in DT group. Moreover, in histopathological examination, the MO therapy in diabetic rats showed mild regeneration of the pancreatic acini and islets of Langerhans compared to DC which indicate the organo-protective effect of MO. Based on present research it can be concluded that MO can be used as anti-diabetogenic agent in food.