2. ANTIHYPERGLYCEMIC EFFECT OF CAMEL MILK
Diabetes mellitus is a serious disease with multiple complications that is rising dramatically worldwide. Three-fourths of the world population cannot afford allopathic medicine and thus has to rely on naturopathic medicine, which is basically derived from natural products of animals and plants.
Once diabetic patients start insulin therapy, they have to take it permanently and usually insulin dose continue to increase as time progresses. Clinical research on the use of camel milk by patients with type 1 diabetes has indicated that drinking camel milk daily decreases the blood glucose level and reduces insulin requirement by 30% . It appears that camel milk provides an insulin-like protein in a different form than in other mammals and/or delivers some other therapeutic compounds that boosts the health of diabetic patients. However, the mechanism is not yet fully understood. Mucosal surfaces are a common and suitable route for delivering drugs such as peptides and proteins to the body. However, the oral administration of insulin is incapable of overcoming mucosal
barriers and is degraded by digestive enzymes before it enters the bloodstream . As a unique feature of camel milk, the insulin-like protein could be protected in the stomach and absorbed efficiently into blood stream to reach the target. This is because camel milk does not coagulate in an acidic environment and it has a higher buffering capacity than the milk
of other ruminants [13]. In addition, since no differences noted in the sequence of camel milk insulin-like protein and its digestion pattern compared to other sources of milk to overcome the mucosal barriers, camel milk insulin-like protein could be protected in the stomach by nanoparticles (e.g., lipid vesicles) to reach the target. Camel milk also contains approximately 52 micro unit/ml of insulin-like protein compared to cow milk (16.32 micro unit/ml) which mimic insulin interaction with its receptor, and it has a higher content of zinc [21] which has a key role in insulin secretory activity in pancreatic beta cells. Beg et al [22] found that the amino acid sequence of some camel milk protein is rich in half cystine,
which has a superficial similarity with the insulin family of peptides. In addition, compared to milk from other mammalian species, camel milk possesses a different casein content, a higher amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids (C18:1eC18:3), larger lipid micelles, and a higher amount of vitamin B3 [23,24]. Furthermore, the small size and weight of camel milk
immunoglobulin may offer enormous potential through interaction with the host cell protein and cause an induction of regulatory cells and finally result in a downward regulation of the immune system and b-cell salvage [18,25]. Some researchers suggest that the insulin-like protein in camel milk
has the ability to resist proteolytic digestion, which makes its absorption into circulation faster than insulin-like protein from other milk sources (Fig. 1)
A previous study shows that raw camel milk has the ability to reduce blood glucose level by 55% in diabetic rats, compared to raw cattle milk (43%). Agrawal et al [26] studied the hypoglycemic activity of raw and pasteurized camel milk in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Based on the results, the blood glucose levels in diabetic rats treated with raw camel milk decreased from 169.68 ± 28.7 mg/dL to 81.54 ± 11.4 mg/dL (p < 0.02) after 4 weeks of treatment, whereas diabetic rats treated with pasteurized camel milk showed a slight decrease from 135.45 ± 20.91 mg/dL to 113 ± 29.09 mg/dL (Table 1) [13,14,26e30]. A new study was conducted by Sboui et al [27] to evaluate the effect of camel milk administered for 5 weeks to alloxan-induced diabetic dogs. A significant reduction in the level of blood glucose from 10.88 ± 0.55 mmol/L to 5.77 ± 0.44 mmol/L occurred in dogs treated with 500 mL of camel milk for 5 weeks (Table 1). The effect of camel milk in comparison with biosynthetic insulin treatment in experimentally induced diabetes in rabbits was investigated by El Said et al . They found that the mean serum insulin level was significantly higher (7.9 ± 0.9 mIU/mL) for diabetic rabbits treated with camel milk for 4 weeks than for untreated diabetic rabbits and insulin-treated diabetic rabbits (2.4 ± 0.1 mIU/mL and 5.6 ± 0.4 mIU/mL, respectively). In diabetic rabbits, treatment with camel milk was able to lower the glucose level more greatly than biosynthetic insulin (Table 1). Al-Numair et al report the antihyperglycemic effect of camel milk on STZ-induced diabetic rats. They found that STZ-diabetic rats that were fed camel milk at the optimum dose of 250 mL/d for 45 days showed a significant
reduction in plasma glucose level from 292.38 ± 19.20 mg/dL to 141.57 ± 12.82 mg/dL. In addition, a higher plasma level of insulin (p < 0.05) was present in STZ-diabetic rats treated with camel milk, compared to untreated diabetic rats (Table 1). A significant reduction (p < 0.05) in blood glucose levels (approximately 30%) has been reported in diabetic rats treated with camel milk for 6 weeks [29]. However, the blood glucose levels in diabetic rats treated with cow or buffalo milk showed an improvement of only 12% or 10%, respectively. A similar study was conducted by Khan et al to study the possible antidiabetic effects of camel milk in STZ induced diabetic rats. They report that the blood glucose levels of diabetic rats that were fed fresh camel milk reduced significantly from 560 mg/dL to 235 mg/dL after 30 days (Table 1). Streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice treated with camel milk whey protein displayed a significant reduction in blood glucose levels from 411 ± 37 mg/dL to 261 ± 25.5 mg/dL after 2 weeks. Throughout the period of study, diabetic mice treated with camel milk whey protein had significantly higher levels of insulin, compared to untreated diabetic mice (Table 1).
Agrawal et al found camel milk had a significant hypoglycemic effect when administered to type 1 diabetic patients as an adjunct therapy for 3 months (Table 2) [18,32,33,35e37]. At the end of 3 months, they observed a significant decrease in insulin doses that were required to achieve glycemic control, and a significant enhancement in hemoglobin A1c level. The mean dose of insulin required before camel milk treatment in the type 1 diabetic patients was 41.16 ± 10.32 units/d. This value gradually reduced to a mean level of 30 ± 12.06 units/d (p < 0.002) during 3 months of treatment . In 2005, Agrawal et al [33] determined the long-term efficacy and safety of camel milk as an adjunct to insulin therapy in patients with type 1 diabetes after 1 year. The mean blood glucose level decreased from 119 ± 19 mg/dL to 95.42 ± 15.70 mg/dL (p < 0.005) and the mean doses of insulin reduced significantly throughout the study period (Table 2). Another study by Agrawal et al [18] involved 50 newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic patients who were divided in two groups of 25 patients: one group received conventional treatment and the other group consumed 500 mL of fresh camel milk in addition to receiving conventional medical treatment for 12 months. The mean blood sugar level in the camel milk-consuming group reduced from 115.16 ± 14.50 mg/dL to 100.20 ± 17.40 mg/dL, compared to the control group (114.40 ± 17.70 mg/dL to 104.00 ± 15.87 mg/ dL). In addition, the requirement of the daily mean dose of insulin reduced from 30.40 ± 11.97 units/d to 19.12 ± 13.39 units/d in the camel milk-consuming group (Table 2). By contrast, the control group showed no significant difference in the mean dose of insulin required after 1 year. This observation was in agreement with another study conducted by Agrawal et al , who reported zero prevalence of DM in the camel milk-consuming Raica community of northwest Rajasthan, India. They stated that people consuming camel milk showed significantly less crude prevalence of DM (0.4%), compared to people who did not consume camel milk (5.5%). Agrawal et al [35] reported a significant reduction (p < 0.01) in the mean dose of insulin in type 1 diabetic patients that was required to obtain glycemic control after 6 months of camel milk treatment (from 41.61 ± 3.08 mg/dL to 28.32 ± 2.66 mg/ dL). Mohamad et al evaluated the efficacy of camel milk as an adjuvant therapy in young type 1 diabetic patients for 16 weeks. Fifty-four type 1 diabetic patients (average age, 20 years) were divided into two groups of 27 patients in which the first group (i.e., the control) was treated by the usual management (i.e., diet, exercise, and insulin) and the second group was treated with 500 mL camel milk and the usual management. They found a significant difference between the control group and camel milk group after 16 weeks. After 16 weeks of treatment, the fasting blood sugar was decreased from 227.2 ± 17.7 mg/dL to 98.9 ± 16.2 mg/dL, and the required daily insulin dose was reduced from 48.1 ± 6.95 units/d to 23 ± 4.05 units/d. An earlier study reports that camel milk in combination with insulin can be an effective supplementation as an adjunctive therapy in controlling patients with type 1 diabetes, compared to camel milk alone or insulin injection alone . The reduction of fasting blood glucose in type 1 diabetic patients treated with camel milk and insulin was approximately 28% after 3 months, compared to 22% or 11% of patients treated with camel milk alone or insulin alone, respectively (Table 2). Furthermore, the combination of camel milk and insulin reduced the postprandial blood glucose in type 1 diabetic patients by 52%, compared to camel milk alone (30%) or insulin alone (12%) . Some researchers suggest that camel milk can be safely consumed by nondiabetic people or by healthy people [30,38,39].
Source: Science Direct
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