Berberine: As A Therapeutic Target for Treating Obese Diabetes

The incidence of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes are constantly increasing around the world. Studies have shown that the overall change in the lifestyle and dietary habits as a primary contributor. Obesity develops when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure. This is the result of an imbalance between the ingestion of energy-dense foods, decreased physical activity, and the inability of the CNS to suppress appetite appropriately. Obesity is a complex disease caused by the interaction of a myriad of genetic, dietary, lifestyle, and environmental factors, which favors a chronic positive energy balance, and leads to increased body fat mass [1]. Additionally, there is a close relationship between diabetes and obesity especially type 2 diabetes, which accounts for approximately 90%. This rapid increase in the occurrence of diabetes is mostly attributed to the growing prevalence of obesity in various communities of the world, which in turn causing several metabolic diseases. Natural products are recently focused on treating the combination of these disorders because of their versatile chemical nature having a multipronged mode of action.