Hypoglycemic natural products with in vivo activities and their mechanisms: a review

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disorder disease, and the number of diabetic patients will reach 578 million by 2030 predictably. Currently, 8 classes of small molecular drugs are used for treating diabetes. However, these drugs cannot completely meet patients’ needs, due to diabetic complications need to be addressed along with diabetes, such as nephropathy, and cardiovascular diseases. Besides, more types of drugs need to be provided for more choices. Hence, scientists still seek lead compounds with hypoglycemic effects. Natural products (NPs) are a reservoir of diverse structures and bioactivities with low toxicity and less side effects. And some of them show effects on diabetic complications, which is a significant idea for drug development. This review aims to summarize natural products with hypoglycemic effects and their details, such as potential mechanisms, biological data, and particularly their advantages in treating diabetes. Considering the huge number of NPs was reported with anti-diabetic activity, and some of them need to be re-validated, this review focuses on the bioactive compounds with in vivo activities. In the end, the trend of natural products treating diabetes was discussed. We hope this review provide a comprehensive and convincing summary, thus lending support to anti-diabetic natural products research.