The 11th edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine welcomes Anthony Fauci to its editorial staff, in addition to more than 85 new contributors. While the organization of the book is similar to previous editions, major emphasis has been placed on disorders that affect multiple organ systems. Important advances in genetics, immunology, and oncology are emphasized. Many chapters of the book have been rewritten and describe major advances in internal medicine. Subjects that received only a paragraph or two of attention in previous editions are now covered in entire chapters. Among the chapters that have been extensively revised are the chapters on infections in the compromised host, on skin rashes in infections, on many of the viral infections, including cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus, on sexually transmitted diseases, on diabetes mellitus, on disorders of bone and mineral metabolism, and on lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly. The major revisions in these chapters and many

Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine

Introduction: Diabetes is a serious metabolic disorder and plenty of medical plants are used in traditional medicines to treat diabetes. These plants have no side effects and many existing medicines are derived from the plants. The purpose of this systematic review is to study diabetes and to summarize the available treatments for this disease, focusing especially on herbal medicine. 

Methods: Required papers about diabetes and effective plants were searched from the databases, including Science direct, PubMed, Wiley, Scopus, and Springer. Keywords in this study are "medicinal plants", "diabetes", "symptom", "herbal", and "treatment". Out of the 490 collected articles (published in the period between 1995 and 2015), 450 were excluded due to non-relevance or lack of access to the original article. 

Results: Diabetes is mainly due to oxidative stress and an increase in reactive oxygen species that can have major effects. Many plants contain different natural antioxidants, in particular tannins, flavonoids, C and E vitamins that have the ability to maintain β-cells performance and decrease glucose levels in the blood. 

Conclusion: According to published results, it can be said that medical plants are more affordable and have less side effects compared synthetic drugs, and are more effective in treatment of diabetes mellitus.

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The role of medicinal plants in the treatment of diabetes: a systematic review.

Obesity is recognized as a severe threat to overall human health and is associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases. Abnormal expansion of white adipose tissue involves increasing the existing adipocytes' cell size or increasing the number through the differentiation of new adipocytes. Adipogenesis is a process of proliferation and differentiation of adipocyte precursor cells in mature adipocytes. As a key process in determining the number of adipocytes, it is a possible therapeutic approach for obesity. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the molecular mechanisms involved in adipogenesis that could serve as suitable therapeutic targets. Reducing bodyweight is regarded as a major health benefit. Limited efficacy and possible side effects and drug interactions of available anti-obesity treatment highlight a constant need for finding novel efficient and safe anti-obesity ingredients. Numerous studies have recently investigated the inhibitory effects of natural products on adipocyte differentiation and lipid accumulation. Possible anti-obesity effects of natural products include the induction of apoptosis, cell-cycle arrest or delayed progression, and interference with transcription factor cascade or intracellular signaling pathways during the early phase of adipogenesis.

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Adipogenesis as a Potential Anti-Obesity Target: A Review of Pharmacological Treatment and Natural Products

History of diabetes.

The management of diabetes mellitus-imperative role of natural products against dipeptidyl peptidase-4, α-glucosidase and sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2).

Natural products have played and continue to play an invaluable role in the treatment of various diseases and in drug discovery processes. It has remained a source of new compounds with diversified structural arrangements possessing interesting biological activities for various disease treatments. Drugs from natural products are usually considered to be safer, cheaper, easily available and sometimes more efficacious than purely synthetic ones. In recent years, scientists have been in search for safer and more potent drugs from natural sources particularly from medicinal plants. Diabetes is one of the chronic disorders which are associated with high mortality risk. The existing drugs have been identified with one or more adverse effects. In the present review, literature was surveyed to highlight the merits of natural products with regard to their role in diabetic management. Notwithstanding the seemingly decline in the natural product approach to drug discovery in favor of modern approaches such as combinatorial chemistry, literature survey has shown that a lot of research effort is still being directed to natural product in search for new antidiabetic agents. Several antidiabetic phytoconstituents have been isolated from medicinal plants and these were of chemically diversified nature which includes flavonoids, glycosides, terpens, polysaccharides and polypeptides. Based on the merits of nature based medicines, the authors advocate the use of standardized crude forms of some of the natural drugs. Further researches geared towards exploiting the vast array of natural products in our environment and development of the isolated compounds to clinically useful drugs for diabetes management is advocated.

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Natural Products as Potential Sources of Antidiabetic Drugs

Diabetes mellitus is a serious endocrine disorder that causes millions of deaths worldwide. The conventional drugs are associated with a number of adverse effects and limitations. In the search for better alternatives, many medicinal plants have been investigated and a variety of compounds have also been isolated. In the present review, medicinal plants selected from those that have been investigated for their antidiabetic potential between the year 2000 and 2013 are presented. The most common families of plants presented are the Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae and Gentianaecae. The structures of some previously isolated compounds with antidiabetic potential are presented. Most of the isolated antidiabetic principles are alkaloids, flavonoids, amino acid, steroids and organic acids. It was however discovered that most of the investigations are preliminary in nature. More detailed investigations into the efficacy, mode of action and safety profile of these plants and the isolated compounds in preclinical and clinical studies are recommended.

	 

	Key words: Antidiabetic plants, hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, medicinal plants review.

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The search for new hypoglycemic agents from plants

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic diso rder with high mortality rate and with defects in multiple biological systems. Two major types of diabetes are recognized, type 1 and 2 with type 2 diabetes (T2D) being by far the more prevalent type. As diabetes affects multiple biological functions, the use of multiple drug classes having different mode of actions is required in order to optimize therapy in diabetic patients. Five major classes of oral antidiabetic agents (OHA) have traditionally been used for the management of patients with T2D. These i nclude the sulphonylureas, meglitinides, biguanides, thiazolidinediones and the alpha

Estella U. Odoh

Papers

Natural Products as Potential Sources of Antidiabetic Drugs

The search for new hypoglycemic agents from plants

Oral anti-diabetic agents-review and updates.