Honey and diabetes mellitus: Obstacles and challenges – Road to be repaired

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Since ancient times, honey has been used due to its nutritional and therapeutic value. The role of honey has been acknowledged in the scientific literature however, its use has been controversially discussed and has not been well accepted in modern medicine especially for diabetic patients. This study aimed to investigate the role of honey in diabetic patients. METHODS: In this study, we identified 107 research articles from data based search engines including “PubMed”, “ISI-Web of Science”, “Embase” and “Google Scholar”. The research papers were selected by using the primary key-terms including “Honey”, “Honey bee” and “Diabetes Mellitus”. The research documents in which “Honey” and “Diabetes Mellitus” were debated are included. After screening, we reviewed 66 papers and finally we selected 35 studies which met the inclusion criteria and the remaining documents were excluded. RESULTS: This study investigated the preclinical, clinical, human and animal model studies on honey and diabetes mellitus and found that honey decreases the fasting serum glucose, increases the sting C-peptide and 2-h postprandial C-peptide. Although, there is a dearth of data and literature also contrary discussed the use of honey in diabetic patients. CONCLUSION: Honey decreases the fasting serum glucose, increases fasting C-peptide and 2-h postprandial C-peptide. Honey had low glycemic index and peak incremental index in diabetic patients. The use of honey in diabetic patients still has obstacles and challenges and needs more large sample sized, multi-center clinical controlled studies to reach better conclusions.