KARACHI, Oct 31: Scientists and researchers at an international symposium on Friday stressed the need for carrying out new research on medicinal plants and natural compounds as they have great potential to prevent diabetic complications.

Around 100 million people around the world were affected by diabetes and the number was increasing day by day, they pointed out while speaking at the 11th International Symposium on Natural Product Chemistry, being held at the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences of Karachi University.

More than 500 delegates, including over 100 foreign scientists and researchers from 35 countries, are participating in the four-day symposium that will conclude on Saturday.

Dr Begum Ruqaiya, a scientist from Bangladesh, pointed out that diabetes had become one of the most challenging health problems of 21st century. Its fast-increasing prevalence called for adoption of new therapeutic and preventive approaches, she said.

“The number of people with diabetes is expected to rise from 150 million at present to 300 million by 2025.

“Traditional preparations from plant sources are widely used almost everywhere, especially in the third world. Therefore, plant materials are considered to be the alternative source for finding out a new lead for the treatment of diabetes,” said Dr Ruqaiya.

Prof (Dr) Nisar Ahmed of the Metropolitan University, Manchester, the UK, was of the opinion that diabetes increased the patients’ susceptibility to retinopathy cataract, atherosclerosis, neuropathy and nephropathy.

Dr Bilge Sener, a Turkish scientist from Gazi University, said the bio-resources had tremendous potential in having excellent chemical diversity to drug discovery programmes and in serving as templates for synthetic drugs. There were well-known examples of clinical drugs derived from natural sources, she added.

She said, “Medicinal plants produce a diverse range of chemically novel bioactive molecules, making them rich sources of different types of medicines.

“There is still a great need for novel compounds with unique mechanisms of action to treat cancer, arthritis and diabetes.”—APP