Purpose: Complimentary and alternative therapies as well as traditional herbal home remedies are booming because they are perceived to be free of side effects and generally recognised as safe due to their natural origin. There are number of reports available on the interaction of anti diabetic drugs in vitro and in clinical trials. Diabetic patients are often treated with multiple synthetic drugs combination due to different co- morbidities and such patients should be informed regarding herb-drug interactions in clinical settings.
Approach: Informations from the published research articles available from MEDLINE, Cochrane and Pub med as well as additional data sources were obtained from manual searches of recent journal articles and textbooks and were used in the preparation of this review article.
Finding: Traditional home remedies and alternative therapies in treatment of Diabetes mellitus may pose concern or complications that would arise from these herbs on the pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic effects of synthetic drugs as they are used in combination therapy.
Conclusion: Herbal remedies are complex mixtures of bioactive entities which may interact with prescription drugs through pharmacodynamic or pharmacokinetic mechanism and sometimes result in serious clinical consequences. Patients and Physician should be familiar with the potential effects of commonly used herbal medications to prevent, recognise and treat potential adverse effect associated with their uses.
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