Revealing the Contribution of Phytochemicals in Syzygium Cumini As-Antidiabetics: A Systematic Review

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is an endocrine system and metabolic disorder caused by defects in insulin secretion and action. Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels (Myrtaceae) are often used in anti-diabetic medicine due to their high polyphenol contents. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the role of phytochemical compounds in S cumini as traditional antidiabetic medicinal plants. The review covers related articles on antidiabetic AND S cumini AND phytochemicals OR bioactive compounds. The examined articles were published from 2001 to January 2023. Pubmed, Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar were utilized as the bibliographic databases in this systematic search. The inclusion criteria include articles written in English that describe experimental research, clinical trials, and randomized studies and articles containing phytochemical content profiling. The exclusion criteria were other types of reports such as literature reviews, conference articles, theses, dissertations, and cases that were irrelevant to the topic. The reporting item guidelines used for references in this review were the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and the Center for Systematic Reviews for Laboratory Animal Experiments (SYRCLE) risk of bias (RoB) tool. By the systematic compensation used, 15 articles that meet the requirements were obtained and were further reviewed thoroughly. Seeds, leaves, and bark of plant parts were reported to be non-toxic in acute experiments on mice or rats. S. cumini contains flavonol glycosides, especially myricetin, myricitrin, quercetin, and kaempferol; phenolics, such as ellagic acid, tannins, and gallic acid; alkaloids; and saponins. These compounds contributions to the overall anti-diabetic activity were discussed by covering an increase of insulin sensitivity, secretion, and usage of glucose in tissues; thereby reducing insulin resistance, oxidative stress, gluconeogenesis, and absorption of carbohydrates and sucrose. In conclusion, the review confirmed that the compounds of S. cumini have a potential for treating diabetes mellitus. Specifically, the seeds and leaves of S. cumini have a high potential as anti-diabetic herbal product, and thus making it crucial to find the research gap to support the development of this herbal compound by establishing preclinical and clinical trials and reliable analytical methods for phytochemical profiling. © 2023 by Indonesian Journal of Pharmacy (IJP).