TCM herbs and their role in treating T2DM and its complications

What is it about?

This article summarizes the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) herbs and prescriptions, as well as extracts, in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), highlighting the various classical mechanisms and unique properties, such as antioxidant function, that adjust the pathophysiology of T2DM.

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Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash

Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Despite a growing prosperity in pharmacological mining and development in the pathophysiological targets for T2DM in recent decades, there is still a great magnitude of space for effectively treating T2DM and its complications, and with many more important objectives, such as reducing the risk of cardiovascular complications, cognitive disorders, obesity, pancreatic islet protection, osteoporosis or frailty, adjusting the metabolic dysfunction, as well as the quality of life for patients. The primary advantage of TCM is its unique ability to modulate the tone of the autonomic nervous system, which is crucial to the pathophysiology of both type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity, as well as mood and the cardiovascular system. However, in the current society, the development and screening of effective targets and subsequent pharmacological developing encounters the problem of limiting values, difficulties in understanding TCM, deep-mining the role of traditional drugs in diseases therapy, accompanied by the increasing unmet need in clinical practice, such as neural-phychological dysfunction, gastrointestinal side-effect of many medications that only targeting the GI aspect in obese population, other side effects when applicated to a more broden background of clinical settings, etc. as well as many manifestation of patients that could not reach to the regards of organical impairment, the limits in delaying the complications. Therefore, developing the effective therapeutic elements of TCM via modern techniques may broaden a new treasure trove for us, and help with more precise and individualized diagnosis and treatment.

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