Due to their high prevalence and incidence, diabetes and
atherosclerosis are increasingly becoming global public health concerns.
Atherosclerosis is one of the leading causes of morbidity and disability in type 1 and/or
type 2 diabetes patients.
Atherosclerosis risk in diabetic patients is obviously higher than that of non-diabetic individuals. Diabetes-related
glycolipid metabolism disorder has been shown to play a central role in
atherosclerosis development and progression.
Hyperglycemia and
dyslipidemia increase the risks for
atherosclerosis and plaque
necrosis through multiple signaling pathways, such as a prolonged increase in
reactive oxygen species (ROS) and inflammatory factors in cardiovascular cells. Notwithstanding the great advances in the understanding of the pathologies of diabetes-accelerated
atherosclerosis, the current medical treatments for diabetic
atherosclerosis hold undesirable side effects. Therefore, there is an urgent demand to identify novel therapeutic targets or alternative strategies to prevent or treat diabetic
atherosclerosis. Burgeoning evidence suggests that plant and
herbal medicines are closely linked with healthy benefits for
diabetic complications, including diabetic
atherosclerosis. In this review, we will overview the utilization of plant and
herbal medicines for the treatment of diabetes-accelerated
atherosclerosis. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms of the ethnopharmacological therapeutic potentials against diabetic
atherosclerosis are gathered and reviewed. It is foreseeable that the natural constituents from medicinal plants might be a new hope for the treatment of diabetes-accelerated
atherosclerosis.