ABSTRACT
Medicinal plants have been used in the treatment of some diseases like diabetes. One of them
is doum fruit extract. The study was conducted to evaluate effect of doum fruit
extract on some biochemical parameters, including enzyme activities and
histopathological changes of pancreas in alloxan induced diabetic rats. Animals
were allocated into five groups of rats, two groups, several as control (one normal and one diabetic
rats) and the other three groups were induced diabetic with doum extract (0.5,
1 and 2 g/kg b·wt) which were given every other day by stomach tube
for 6 weeks. Evaluation
was made for glucose, insulin, lipid profile, enzyme activities, antioxidant
activity and histopathological changes of pancreas. The results showed that
doum fruit extract decreased blood glucose, insulin, total cholesterol (TC),
triglyceride (TG), total lipid (TL), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol
(LDL-C), lactate dyhadreygenase (LDH), alanine and aspartate amino transferase
(ALT, AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and Malondialdehyde (MDA) while plasma catalase activity and high
density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were significantly (p < 0.05) increased. Therefore, the
results of this study demonstrated that the active compounds present in the
doum extract have a positive effect on the biochemical parameters of diabetic
rats.