Management of Diabetes and Its Complications with Medicinal Plants

Call for Papers

Diabetes mellitus (DM) affects nearly 250 million people worldwide. This abnormally high concentration of glucose in the blood is called hyperglycemia. Over time, it can cause complications in the eyes, kidneys, heart, and blood vessels.

In addition, abnormalities in glucose and lipid metabolism are a common feature of DM. The available therapeutic approaches for DM include sulphonylureas, which increase insulin release, metformin, which reduces hepatic glucose production, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) activators (thiazolidinediones), which increase insulin sensitivity, α-glucosidase inhibitors, which interfere with glucose absorption, and insulin itself. However, all these therapeutics suffer from the drawback of several side effects, necessitating the discovery of novel pharmaceuticals for the treatment of DM, with the least number of undesirable effects. Natural products and their derivatives have been extensively used as remedies for various diseases, and a significant proportion of contemporary drugs are either natural compounds or their analogs. Traditional approaches using extracts from different plant parts to treat DM have been known for a long time, even though their mechanism of action has not always been studied in detail. There are many medicinal plants studied for their antidiabetic activities. We invite investigators to submit original research and review articles on medicinal plants involved in management of diabetes and its complications. Potential topics include, but not limited to:

• Protective role of medicinal plants on the onset of diabetes
• Antidiabetic effect of medicinal plants and their mechanism of action
• Effect of medicinal plants on diabetic complications
• Study of the toxicity of antidiabetic plants
• Development of new drugs from antidiabetic medicinal plants
• Contraindication in the use of natural products in the treatment of diabetes
• Adverse effects in the use of natural products in the treatment of diabetes

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Pierre Kamtchouing, Laboratoire de Physiologie Animale, Faculté des Sciences, Université de Yaoundé 1, BP 812, Yaoundé, Cameroon

Guest Editors

• Pierre S. Haddad, Natural Health Products and Metabolic Diseases Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology, University of Montreal, P.O. Box 6128, Montreal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7
• Benny Tan Kwong Huat, Department of Pharmacology, National University of Singapore, Singapore