MEXICO – Researchers from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL) are seeking an active antidiabetic compound from traditional plants.

The school said the study special is carried out by Catalina Rivas Rivers and laboratory specialists of Analytical Chemistry, Unit B of the Faculty of Biological Sciences (FCB) Mizael David Ortiz.

He said that a doctor who also studied herbalism San Gabriel Mixtepec, Oaxaca, told the investigators he had a plant traditionally used to improve the treatment of diabetes.

The plant is taken as tea in southern region of the country. The biologists went to Oaxaca to collect various plants, not yet cataloged, and that research will done in the form of a PhD studies in Natural Products Chemistry.

The researchers stressed that the problem of diabetes is very worrying worldwide, it is estimated that there are 280 million people who suffer from it and, according to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), the figure will double in the next decade.

In Nuevo Leon, they said, it is also alarming increase in people suffering from diabetes, since it is estimated that in the last 15 years the percentage figure of people suffering from this disease doubled.

In 2000, they said, it was about 8 percent, but since 2014 the number of patients with diabetes in Nuevo Leon exceeds 15 percent and still rising, higher than the national average of 12 percent figure.

The problem is further aggravated because, according to experts, 70 percent of people in the organization who have diabetes do not have adequate treatment, they stressed.