Antihyperglycemic, antihyperlipidemic and antioxidant activities of polysaccharides from Catathelasma ventricosum in streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice

•CVPs have wide range of molecular weight and mainly composed of α-d-Glucopyranose.•CVPs show high hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic properties in diabetic mice.•CVPs show protective effect on related tissues by pathological histology.•CVPs with high dose are safe for normal mice. It is the first time to extract polysaccharides (CVPs) from Catathelasma ventricosum. The antihyperglycemic and antioxidant activity of CVPs in streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice were examined. Compared with untreated diabetic mice, the administration of CVPs for 30days caused a significant decrease in the concentrations of blood glucose, total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TGs), low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) and maleic dialdehyde (MDA), and a significant increase in the concentrations of high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) and the activities of antioxidant enzymes. Specially, when normal mice were treated with CVPs, all detection indexes and pathologic morphologies of liver, kidney and pancreas are similar to untreated normal mice, which indicated CVPs are safe for normal mice. In addition, the average molecular weight of CVPs was estimated to be from 3.7×103 to 1.7×107Da and they were mainly composed of glucose (93.5%) with the conformation of α-d-Glucopyranose.