Effect of feeding of artemisia Hebra alba on glucokinase and ATPase activity in normal and diabetic rabbits

Since acute or chronic feeding on extract of the plant herb Artemisia herbal alba [AHA] was shown to reduce fasting blood sugar level in alloxan-diabetic [ALX-D] rabbits without altering plasma insulin or intestinal glucose absorption, the following work was done to show its effect on hepatic glucokinase [GK] and dinitrophenal [DNP]-stimulated mitochondrial ATPase [DSM-A TPase] activities. Diabetes mellitus resulted in a significant decrease in the activity of hepatic glucokinase [GK] [P < 0.05 after 4 weeks] and DSM-ATPase [60% after 12. weeks]. Daily oral treatment with AHA [0.5 p/kg/day] for 16 weeks reduced fasting blood glucose in normal [from 113.8 +/- 11.0 to 80.8 +/- 8.4 mg/Dl] and ALX-D animals [from 385.3 +/- 35.6 to 231.8 +/- 12.5 mg/Dl], and impeded the reduction in activities of [GK] [P < 0.05 after 4 weeks] and ATPase [P < 0.05 after 4 weeks] in ALX-D rabbits when compared with untreated animals. These effects were less than that of insulin, but persisted for I week after AHA withdrawal. Fasting for 72h reduced GK activity in normal animals [from 0.73 +/- 008 to 0.37 +/- 0.04 micro mol/g tissue/min] and diabetic animals [from 0.46 +/- 0.03 to 0.30 +/- 0.03 micro mol/g tissue/min], and this was partially impeded by AHA pretreatment. It is concluded that AHA constituents might have an insulin-like orpotentiating. action which protects KG and ATPase activities in liver and possibly other tissues and help to control the hyperglycaemia of diabetes, but can potentiate the hypoglycaemia of starvation