Study of Dried Apricot Effect on Type 2 Diabetic Patients as a Hypoglycemic Material

Abstract

Background & objectives: apricot has constituents with antioxidant activity and some of them had been studied and showed good results against diabetes. Dried apricot is available during the year and its constituents are concentrated as well as apricot is desirable fruit and very safe. Therefore the aim of this work is to study the ability of apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) in decreasing glucose concentration in patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods: this study was undertaken on 67 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, (39-67 years old) with mean ± SE (49.313 ± 1.2968). The healthy control group consisted of 75 individuals which did not suffer from any problem, (19-69 years old) with mean ± SE (48.65 ± 2.15). The patients did not have other interfering health problems. Blood glucose concentrations were determined using enzymatic colorimetric method ENDPOINT for all subjects at beginning and the concentration labeled as (time 0). Directly after blood withdrawing, all subjects had 18 grams of dried apricot. The second time labeled as (time 30) which mean the concentration of glucose after 30 minutes of eating the apricot. After eating the apricot, another sample of blood was collected from every subject to determine the glucose concentration and this time the concentration called (time 60). Results: the results showed that the apricot decrease glucose in blood of patients of type2 diabetes not healthy control and there is significant differences (p< 0.01). There are three expectation equations to estimate glucose level in experiment conditions. Interpretation & conclusions: apricot is good food for diabetic patients. It is safe, desirable, it decrease glucose concentration, and it reduce the risk of diabetes complications. Apricots do all this activities because it has constituents with antioxidant activity and other compounds with hypoglycemic activity like anthocyanin, procyanidin, cartenoids, and others.