Pharmacological Screening and Standardization of New Polyherbal Formulation as an Antidiabetic Phytotherapeutics

Objective: Emerging medicinal plants like Annona squamosa, Morus alba and Nelumbo nuciferaare individually used in treatment of diabetes mellitus. The Antidiabetic Activity of these emerging medicinal plants is well known as an individual antidiabetic plant but the effect of their combination is still unclear. Here the study is designed to develop the polyherbal formulation of leaves extract of only this emerging Antidiabeticmedicinal plants with fruits extract of piper longum as bioavailablity enhancer and screened for antidiabetic potential in Streptozotocin (60 mg/kg) induced diabetic rats. The investigating formulation was also evaluated for quality control parameters i.eMarker based High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC), Heavy metal content determination, Microbial load. The quality control parameters were evaluated as per the WHO guidelines of herbal drugs. Methods: Two dose level 200 and 400 mg/kg of formulation was selected for Oral glucose tolerance test and antidiabetic activity against the standard drug Glibenclamide (5mg/kg). Acute toxicity study of formulation did not showed any toxic symptoms up to the dose level of 2000mg.kg body weight. Formulation was administered daily for 15 consecutive days and blood glucose level was measured at 0 hr., after 3 hr., 5th day, 10th day and 15th day. At the end of study the blood samples were collected and tested for biochemical parameters Total Cholesterol, Total Triglycerides, High density lipoprotein, Low density lipoprotein (TC,TG,HDL-C,LDL-C), Urea Creatinine. Blood glucose level was determined by glucometer (Escencia entrust, Bayer Health Care). Results: Study showed that new polyherbal formulation with a dose of 400mg/kg was found extremely significant (65.8%) in reducing the blood glucose level and this was also supported by the result of biochemical analysis of blood samples. HPLTLC analysis showed the effective separation at 366 nm and also revealed the presence of active component in the formulation. Total microbial load, heavy metal content was found to be within the limits of WHO guidelines. Interpretation and Conclusions: Synergistic effect of this polyherbal combination showed the very fruitful result in reducing the blood glucose level i.e 65.8% from 0 to 15 days which is very near to the Standard drug Glibenclamide which showed 66.2% decrease in blood glucose level from 0 to 15 days.