Antidiabetic potential of medicinal plants from the Peruvian Amazon: A review

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by the presence of chronic hyper-glycemia that is accompanied, to a greater or lesser extent, by alterations in the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids. It is the leading cause of death in developed countries. Current antidiabetic drug treatments present several adverse effects for which it has started searching for new oral hypoglycemic agents from vegetal species. This review presents the medicinal plants from the Peruvian Amazon used in the treatment of diabetes and a systematic review of their hypoglycemic properties reported in the literature in the last twenty years used in different bibliographic databases. Seventy seven medicinal plants are reported as being used for the treatment of diabetes by Amazonian indigenous people, which 46.75% of species report hypoglycemic activity, evidencing that traditional knowledge is a great source for to searching antidiabetic drugs and also an alternative for future research.