Camel Milk Has Beneficial Effects on Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review

CONTEXT Controlling diabetes, a worldwide metabolic disease, by effective alternative treatments is currently a topic of great interest. Camel milk is believed to be a suitable hypoglycemic agent in experimental animals and patients with diabetes. The current systematic review aimed at evaluating the effect of camel milk on diabetes. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION A comprehensive search was dine in PubMed and Scopus for all clinical trials and animal studies documented up to 2015, which focused on the effect of camel milk on diabetes markers. Studies which assessed the effects of camel milk, with no dose limit, on glucose parameters and lipid profiles in animals or humans with diabetes, were included. The quality of the included clinical trials was evaluated by the Delphi score checklist. RESULTS The initial search yielded 73 articles. After screening abstracts and full texts, 22 articles were included consisting of 11 animal studies and 11 clinical trials, 8 of which focused on type 1 diabetes and the other three on type 2diabetes. All animal studies except for 1 showed significant reductions in at least 1 of the diabetes parameters such as blood glucose, insulin resistance, glycated hemoglobin, and lipid profile. In most of the clinical trials, the recommended dose of camel milk was 500 mL/day, which led to improvement of diabetes markers even after 3 months in patients with diabetes. CONCLUSIONS Most of the studies in the current systematic review demonstrated the favorable effects of camel milk on diabetes mellitus by reducing blood sugar, decreasing insulin resistance and improving lipid profiles.