ABSTRACT
Background: Diabetes mellitus is a commonly occurring metabolic disorder accompanied by high morbidity and alarming mortality. Besides various available therapies, induction of pancreatic regeneration has emerged as a promising strategy for alleviating the damaging effect of diabetes. Honey, a potent antioxidative and anti-inflammatory agent, has been reported in the literature archive to exhibit favourable results in the regeneration process of several organ systems. Design: The current research work was intended to explore the potential role of manuka honey in pancreatic regeneration in alloxan-induced diabetic rats by accessing the pancreatic histology and levels of relevant transcription factors, including MAFA, PDX-1, INS-1, INS-2, NEUROG3, NKX6-1, and NEUROD. An equal number of rats were allocated to all four experimental groups: normal, negative control, positive control, and treatment group. Diabetes was induced in all groups except normal through a single intraperitoneal dose of alloxan monohydrate. No subsequent treatment was given to the negative control group, while the positive control and treatment groups were supplemented with metformin (150 mg/kg/day) and manuka honey (3 g/kg/day), respectively. Results: Statistical comparison of glucose and insulin levels, oxidative stress indicators, changes in the architecture of pancreatic islets, and expression levels of regeneration-associated transcription factors advocated the potential role of manuka honey in ameliorating the alloxan-induced hyperglycaemia, hyperinsulinemia, oxidative stress, and necrotic changes in islets along with significant upregulation of relevant transcription factors. Conclusion: This suggests to us the auspicious role of antioxidants in honey in pancreatic regeneration and advocates the favourable role of manuka honey in combating diabetes mellitus.
ABSTRACT
Honey is the principal premier product of beekeeping familiar to Homo for centuries. In every geological era and culture, evidence can be traced to the potential usefulness of honey in several ailments. With the advent of recent scientific approaches, honey has been proclaimed as a potent complementary and alternative medicine for the management and treatment of several maladies including various neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and multiple sclerosis, etc. In the literature archive, oxidative stress and the deprivation of antioxidants are believed to be the paramount cause of many of these neuropathies. Since different types of honey are abundant with certain antioxidants, primarily in the form of diverse polyphenols, honey is undoubtedly a strong pharmaceutic candidate against multiple neurological diseases. In this review, we have indexed and comprehended the involved mechanisms of various constituent polyphenols including different phenolic acids, flavonoids, and other phytochemicals that manifest multiple antioxidant effects in various neurological disorders. All these mechanistic interpretations of the nutritious components of honey explain and justify the potential recommendation of sweet nectar in ameliorating the burden of neurological disorders that have significantly increased across the world in the last few decades.
