Yangqing He
Department of Applied Chemistry, School of Science,
Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, China
Diabetes and its associated adverse cardiovascular conditions are increasingly prevalent in the world and are considered as one of the main threats to human health in the 21 st centrury. Among two type of diabetes diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disease. It ranks high among the top 10 leading causes of death in the world and total number of people with diabetes is projected to rise from 171 million in 2000 to 366 million in 2030 worldwide. Diabetes treatments exhaust enormous amounts of resources including medicines, diets, physical training, and so on in all countries of the world. Type 2 diabetes is a complex, metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycemia and subsequent chronic complications leading to renal failure, blindness and coronary artery disease. Hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes is caused by increased insulin resistance and impaired insulin secretion from the pancreas. The conventional approach to treat type 2 diabetes focuses on the control of blood glucose levels in order to reduce the incidence of the microvascular and macrovascular complications associated with high levels of blood glucose.
The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily of ligand-dependent transcription factors with three isoforms named α, g and d. Ever since their discovery in the 1990s they have risen to today’s most prominent targets for treatment of metabolic disorders like dyslipidemia and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Activation of PPARs leads to a modulation of the expression of several target genes, which results in increased clearance of glucose and lipids from the blood. The currently available PPARs agonists aimed at diabetes are known as thiazolidinedione derivatives (TZDs), such as glitazones, pioglitazone (brand name Actos) and rosiglitazone (Avandia). These drugs are known to increase the sensitivity of the body’s tissues to the action of insulin.
The genus Cornus contains many medicinal plants. The genus Cornus belongs to the family Cornaceae and consists of approximately 58 species, distributed mainly in the northern hemisphere, including eastern Asia, southeastern and northern part of the United States.5 Many species of this genus have been commonly prescribed in traditional Chinese medicine as a tonic formula and considered to possess actions including invigoration of the liver and kidney, preservation of essence, and anti-diabetes. Such as in traditional Chinese medicine, Liuwei Dihuang Wan is a prescription for treating diabetic disorders. Corni fructus is one of its six prescribed herb meidicine plant and plays the key roles in the treatment of anti-diabetes. This prescription is used alone or modified by adding additional components for diabetic therapy in China and Japan for a long time.
In this paper, based on the review the current investigation of PPARs agonists and their mechanisms of action, we described the natural PPARs agonists isolated from the leaves of Genus Cornus.
