Traditional medicines and natural products harbor a diverse array of biological activities that make them valuable in treating metabolic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. These products and their active metabolites interface with the body through various pathways, primarily blood-entry and non-blood-entry routes. The blood-entry pathway allows direct absorption of bioactive compounds into the bloodstream, facilitating widespread therapeutic impacts. Alternatively, the non-blood-entry route involves the gut microbiota breaking down these substances, thereby indirectly influencing metabolic diseases via metabolites affecting organs like the liver and kidneys. The complex interactions in these pathways underscore an urgent need for focused research to untangle and harness their full therapeutic potential.
This Research Topic aims to deepen the understanding of how medicinal plants, their extracts and metabolites prevent and treat metabolic diseases. Specifically, it seeks to identify and characterize potent bioactive metabolites, clarify the mechanisms through which these metabolites exert their effects, and explore their interactions with metabolic pathways and the gut microbiome. By studying these interactions, we can potentially unlock new preventive and therapeutic strategies that enhance metabolic health.
To gather further insights into these complex interactions, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Identification and screening of bioactive ingredients: Focus on isolating, purifying, and evaluating the activity of potential bioactive ingredients from both new and under-researched traditional medicines or natural products.
• Blood entry pathways research: Detailed studies on how bioactive components directly interact with metabolic targets like enzymes and receptors after entering the bloodstream and affecting metabolic disease processes.
• Gut microbiota-mediated non-blood entry pathways: Examination of how bioactive components indirectly impact host metabolism by regulating gut microbiota structure, function, and metabolite production, including the health benefits of metabolites like short-chain fatty acids.
• Considering the need to comply with the ‘4R principle (Reduce, Refine, Replace and Responsibility) assess the use of animal models in metabolic disease research, develop and validate new animal models for metabolic conditions with a more limited effect on the animal or studies replacing such models.
• Development and validation of new in vitro and ex vivo models for metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity, including methods for model establishment and testing for pharmacological effects.
We also welcome Original Research, Review, and Mini Review articles that align with the outlined themes.
Please note:
1) Please self-assess your MS using the ConPhyMP tool (https://ga-online.org/best-practice), and follow the standards established in the ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205. All the manuscripts need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here). Importantly, please ascertain that the ethnopharmacological context is clearly described (pillar 3d) and that the material investigated is characterized in detail (
pillars 2 a and b).
2) Clinical trial articles will be accepted for review only if they are randomized, double-blinded, and placebo controlled. Statistical power analysis or a justification of the sample size is mandatory as is a detailed chemical characterization of the study medication (see the ConPhyMP statement).
3) In silico studies like network analyses or docking studies are generally not accepted unless they are combined with detailed in vitro or in vivo analysis of the material (extract) under investigation.