REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1674713
This article is part of the Research TopicBiotechnology Frontiers in PharmacologyView all articles
Betulinic Acid and Obesity-Related Disorders
Provisionally accepted
- School of Health, Polytechnic Institute of porto, Porto, Portugal
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The obesity epidemic is not just a health issue, it is increasingly driving a shift in the prevalence of chronic diseases, affecting 890 million adults and straining healthcare systems worldwide. Conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and various cancer types are closely tied to this growing crisis.Betulinic acid has anti-in lammatory, antioxidant and anti-cancer properties and modulates key metabolic pathways such as NF-κB and AMPK signaling. This compound improves insulin sensitivity, reduces hepatic steatosis, mitigates the progression of atherosclerosis and ibrosis, and suppresses in lammatory responses, which are important in treating those obesity-related disorders.Additionally, betulinic acid use in cancer treatment has been explored due to its potential in angiogenesis and metastasis inhibition and promotion of apoptosis.This review spotlights the therapeutic potential of the natural compound betulinic acid in processes such as insulin sensitivity, glucose and lipid metabolism, adiposity, in lammation, oxidative stress, intestinal microbiota, and other mechanisms underlying different obesity-related disorders.
Keywords: Health, Obesity, Betulinic acid, Cancer, Apoptosis
Received: 28 Jul 2025; Accepted: 05 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Azevedo, Ferraz, Vieira, Prudêncio and Fernandes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ricardo Ferraz, School of Health, Polytechnic Institute of porto, Porto, Portugal
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.