Lakshmi Huttada, MB Hiremath and Niketan Laner D’Souza
Background: Traditional medicines have been potential in regulating blood glucose control, leading to herbal treatment to manage diabetes from long time. Diabetes is proving to be a major problem throughout the world in the recent years. In spite of synthetic medications available in the market, to reduce the ill effects of diabetes and its secondary complications, herbal formulations are preferred due to less side effects and low cost. Objective: The present study attempts in studying antidiabetic property of an unexploited plant, Exacum pedunculatum, belonging to Gentianaceae family, from the Western Ghats of India. Methodology: The dried plant material was subjected to extraction for isolating compounds which was purified to obtain biguanide compound and screened in silico to study the antidiabetic nature of the compound. Result: Promising phytochemicals are present in the extract of the plant. Exacum pedunculatum which was further studied in silico for the drug activity. The experiment showed that the bioactive compound isolated from the selected plant showed higher activity than the drug molecule (Metformin) available in the market. Conclusion: As diabetes is a multifactorial disease leading to several complications, and demands a multiple therapeutic approach; medicinal plants are being looked up once again for the treatment of diabetes. There is a need for conducting clinical research in herbal drugs, developing simple bioassays for biological standardization, pharmacological and toxicological evaluation, and developing various animal models for toxicity and safety evaluation. It is also important to establish mechanism of action of the active components from these plant extracts.