Research progress in hypoglycemic effect and mechanism of saponins diabetes (DM) is a metabolic disease characterized by elevated blood sugar, often accompanied by a series of complications involving multiple tissues and organs, the most common ones such as kidney disease, retinopathy, neuropathy, sexual dysfunction and cardiomyopathy, which can cause diabetes patients to suffer from heart attack, stroke, blindness, renal failure, amputation and other hazards, and reduce the overall quality of life. According to the latest version of IDF diabetes Atlas released by the International diabetes Alliance, the crude prevalence of diabetes (20-79 years old) in the world is 9.3%, and about 463 million adults have diabetes, which is becoming the third largest killer of human health after cancer and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
More and more studies have confirmed that the pathogenesis of diabetes is related to various signaling pathways, such as insulin signaling pathway, carbohydrate metabolism pathway, endoplasmic reticulum stress related pathway, pathway involving insulin secretion and PPAR regulation, and chromatin modification pathway. These signaling pathways have become the main source of new drug targets for the treatment of diabetes. For example, insulin sensitizing drugs biguanide (metformin) and thiazolidinediones (rosiglitazone and pioglitazone) have been used for the treatment of diabetes through acting on the above pathways for many years, but clinical side effects have been found after taking these anti diabetes drugs. In recent years, traditional Chinese medicine and its active ingredients have greater structural diversity and less side effects than synthetic compounds. They have shown great advantages and potential in the treatment of diabetes, a chronic disease. They can become the main source of bioactive agents and play a key role in the development of new drug research lead compounds. Natural products, including alkaloids, phenols, terpenoids, flavonoids, saponins, polysaccharides, etc., which have been studied extensively, have significant anti diabetes effects. Among them, a large number of experiments have confirmed that the hypoglycemic activity of most anti diabetes medicinal plants is attributed to the presence of saponins.
Saponins are composed of non sugar triterpenoids or steroidal saponins that bind to the glycosyl portion. They have attracted widespread attention due to their various biological activities such as anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-tumor, hypoglycemic, and lipid homeostasis regulation. Among them, hypoglycemic effects are regulated through multiple targets and signaling pathways, mainly involving insulin signaling pathway, carbohydrate based metabolic pathway, endoplasmic reticulum stress regulation pathway, PPAR regulation pathway, free fatty acid promotion of insulin secretion, and multi pathway joint regulation. This article mainly reviews the hypoglycemic effect of saponins based on the signal pathways involved in the hypoglycemic activity of saponins, clarifies the mechanism of action and effective mechanism related to the treatment of diabetes in vivo, explores reasonable and efficient targets and pathways to prevent diabetes from threatening global health, deepens the understanding of the biological activity of saponins, and hopes to play a reference role in the prevention and treatment of diabetes.

 

 

This article summarizes the key signal pathways of saponins for the treatment of diabetes. These signal pathways have become the main source of new drug targets related to the treatment of diabetes, providing further evidence for saponins in reducing blood sugar, making saponins have the potential to develop into lead compounds of anti diabetes drugs and new anti diabetes drugs, so as to provide theoretical basis and diversified possibilities for the treatment of diabetes, and to a certain extent, promote the research progress in the development of active ingredients of Chinese herbal medicine.

The pathogenesis of diabetes is complex and full of challenges. There are still some problems in the development of safe and effective anti diabetes drugs:; (2) It is generally believed that both genetic and environmental factors are related to the onset and development of diabetes. However, the specific etiology and exact pathogenesis of the disease are not completely clear. The corresponding metabolic process, dose effect relationship, toxicology and other aspects after saponin treatment need to be further defined in future research; (3) At present, most of the research on its therapeutic effect is still in the animal experiment stage, mostly at the level of observing phenomena and inferring mechanisms. Clinical research is obviously insufficient, and some mechanisms are still possible speculations, which to some extent limits the accuracy and reproducibility of experimental results. In the future, with the continuous development of modern chemistry, biology and other technologies, the clinical research on the hypoglycemic mechanism of saponins will be combined with modern scientific methods and regulatory means to further carry out in-depth research on the material basis, pharmacological mechanism and toxicological evaluation. The research and development of saponins against diabetes will certainly show a broader application prospect.