Hypoglycemic effect of Taraxacum officinale root extract and its synergism with Radix Astragali extract

Taraxacum officinale (dandelion) and Radix Astragali are traditional medicinal and edible plants with high nutritional value. In this study, the synergistic hypoglycemic effect of DRE and Radix Astragali extract (RAE) was evaluated. Our results showed that water extract of dandelion (DRE‐w), mainly containing polysaccharides (63.92 ± 1.82 mg/g), total flavonoid (2.57 ± 0.06 mg/g), total phenolic compounds (8.93 ± 0.34 mg/g), and saponins (0.54 ± 0.05 mg/g), exhibited significantly inhibitory effect on α‐glucosidase and α‐amylase. DRE‐w and RAE had synergistic hypoglycemic effect; we found that DRE‐w and its combination with RAE could relieve the state of insulin resistance in IR‐HepG2 cells. The combination could more significantly increase the glucose consumption and intracellular glycogen content, and improve the activity of hexokinase and pyruvate kinase in IR‐HepG2 cells. In summary, DRE and its combination with RAE can be developed as the drugs or functional foods for diabetes prevention and treatment. In this study, the effect of dandelion root extracts (DREs) on the hypoglycemic effect and analysis of active compounds were investigated. We found that DRE and RAE had synergistic hypoglycemic effect. We believe that the results of this research are significant to the development of functional foods and healthcare drugs with hypoglycemic effects.