A study of the anti-diabetic agents of camel milk

The number of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has risen steeply recentlyexhausting the ability of health care systems to deal with the epidemic. Seventy-fivepercent of people with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries. Thelargest populations of diabetics are in China and India, with many of those peopleliving in extreme poverty. Combined forces of governmental health care, charitiesand donation of pharmaceutical companies would not be able to cope with the financialdemands needed for medicaments and treatments for these people. Therefore, itis worth looking into traditional folk remedies to find if there is any scientificmerit to justify their claims for alleviating symptoms of diabetes. There is atraditional belief in the Middle East that regular consumption of camel milk helpsin the prevention and control of diabetes. Recently, it has been reported thatcamel milk can have such properties. Literature review suggests the followingpossibilities: i) insulin in camel milk possesses special properties that makesabsorption into circulation easier than insulin from other sources or cause resistanceto proteolysis; ii) camel insulin is encapsulated in nanoparticles (lipid vesicles)that make possible its passage through the stomach and entry into the circulation;iii) some other elements of camel milk make it anti-diabetic. Sequence of camelinsulin and its predicted digestion pattern do not suggest differentiability toovercome the mucosal barriers before been degraded and reaching the blood stream.However, we cannot exclude the possibility that insulin in camel milk is presentin nanoparticles capable of transporting this hormone into the bloodstream. Although,much more probable is that camel milk contains 'insulin-like' small molecule substancesthat mimic insulin interaction with its receptor.