REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
This article is part of the Research TopicPlant-Derived Bioactives in Disease Modulation: Bridging Molecular Mechanisms and Therapeutic ApplicationsView all 3 articles
Recent Advances in Natural Polysaccharides for Type 2 Diabetes Management: Sources, Structural Characteristics, and Mechanistic Insights
Provisionally accepted
- Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
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The global prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) continues to rise, posing significant challenges for existing therapeutic strategies, which are often limited by poor bioavailability, high cost, and adverse effects. Natural polysaccharides have emerged as promising metabolites due to their broad sources, favorable safety profiles, and stable efficacy. This review systematically summarizes the sources, structural characteristics, and mechanisms of action of natural polysaccharides with anti-T2DM activity, with a particular focus on their multi-target regulatory effects in mitigating T2DM and its complications. By integrating structural diversity—such as molecular weight, glycosidic linkage patterns, and branching architecture — with functional outcomes across key pathogenic pathways including insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress, gut microbiota dysbiosis, and mitochondrial dysfunction, this work elucidates fundamental structure-activity relationships. The review not only bridges existing knowledge gaps in multi-mechanistic integration but also provides a conceptual framework for the structure-based development of polysaccharide-based therapeutics against T2DM, highlighting future research directions.
Keywords: Therapeutic polysaccharides of natural origin, type 2 diabetes mellitus, structural characterization, Complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus, Mechanism
Received: 14 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang, Gong, Jiang, Yang, Jiang, Wang and Tong. 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: Qiaozhen Tong, 003578@hnucm.edu.cn
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