Effect of Chronic Administration of Forskolin on Glycemia and Oxidative Stress in Rats with and without Experimental Diabetes

Abstract

Forskolin is a diterpene derived from the plant Coleus forskohlii. Forskolin activates adenylate cyclase, which increases intracellular cAMP levels. The antioxidant and antiinflammatory action of forskolin is due to inhibition of macrophage activation with a subsequent reduction in thromboxane B2 and superoxide levels. These characteristics have made forskolin an effective medication for heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and asthma. Here, we evaluated the effects of chronic forskolin administration on blood glucose and oxidative stress in 19 male Wistar rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes compared to 8 healthy male Wistar rats. Rats were treated with forskolin, delivered daily for 8 weeks. Glucose was assessed by measuring fasting blood glucose in diabetic rats and with an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) in healthy rats. Oxidative stress was assessed by measuring 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8‑OHdG) in 24-h urine samples. In diabetic rats, without forskolin, fasting blood glucose was significantly higher at the end than at the beginning of the experiment (8 weeks). In both healthy and diabetic rats, forskolin treatment lowered the fasting glucose at the end of the experiment but no effect was found on oral glucose tolerance. The 8-OHdG levels tended to be less elevated in forskolin-treated than in untreated group. Our results showed that chronic administration of forskolin decreased fasting blood glucose levels; however, the reductions of 8-OHdG were not statistically significant.

Forskolin Modulate Silent Information Regulator 1 (SIRT1) gene Expression and Halts Experimentally-Induced Acute Kidney Injury

“…These results suggest that FSK decreases oxidative stress and improves the acute kidney injury of glycerol, this is in agree with [30] that reported the protective effect of chronic administration of forskolin on glycemia and oxidative stress in rats with and without induced diabetes. [31,32] reported that cAMP also increased renal blood flow and glomerular filtration rate suggesting that an intracellular accumulation of cAMP by forskolin may be responsible for the afferent arteriolar dilatation which improves the kidney function.…”

“…This is in agreement with previous studies which reported that forskolin decreased the lipid peroxidation in pre-treated erythrocytes and concluded that the antioxidant effect of forskolin could be compared with the effects of probucol and vitamin E [34]. It has been observed that in vitro forskolin increased the level of the antioxidants [19] Also there is anti-inflammatory effect of forskolin which is related to its antagonistic effect on TNFα and also by decreasing the level of inflammatory mediators as histamine, interleukins (IL-1β,IL-4, IL-6, IL-8), leukotriene (LT-4), antigens [30].…”

Forskolin ameliorates mancozeb‐induced testicular and epididymal toxicity in Wistar rats by reducing oxidative toxicity and by stimulating steroidogenesis

“…Supplementation of forskolin significantly enhanced the levels of GSH and activity levels of SOD and catalase which precluded LPx and thereby reduced oxidative toxicity in the testis and epididymis of mancozeb‐exposed rats. These results support the earlier findings reporting the use of forskolin in effective treatment against oxidative toxicity …”

Isoforskolin and forskolin attenuate lipopolysaccharide‐induced inflammation through TLR4/MyD88/NF‐κB cascades in human mononuclear leukocytes

“…This study is similar with our results. Moreover, FSK has effects of weight loss (Doseyici, Mehmetoglu, Toker, Yerlikaya, & Erbay, 2014), decreasing fasting blood glucose levels (Rios-Silva, Trujillo, Trujillo-Hernandez, et al, 2014), reducing intraocular pressure in patient with glaucoma (Vetrugno et al, 2012), nerve protection (Jensen, Ducray, Widmer, & Meyer, 2015), improving depression (Menninger & Tabakoff, 1997), antitumor (Follin-Arbelet et al, 2015), antiaging (Tumer, Bowman, Larochelle, Kelley, & Scarpace, 1997), and dilating bronchi (Kanne, Burte, Prasanna, & Gujjula, 2015).…”