Anemarrhena asphodeloides improves blood glucose by modulating gut microbiota in diabetic rats

Diabetes is one of the most serious global health emergencies of the 21st century. Gut microbiota may play an important role in the development of diabetes. Anemarrhena asphodeloides (A. asphodeloides) is one of the ten most common Chinese herbs for the treatment of diabetes. We want to investigate whether A. asphodeloides with low bioavailability interact with gut microbiota in this study. After administration, AAE has a significant anti-diabetes effect in moderate dose (60 mg•kg-1•d-1, MD) and high dose (180 mg•kg-1•d-1, HD) group. we evaluated anti-diabetes mechanism of an A. asphodeloides extract (AAE) in high fat diet and streptozotocin induced rats based on gut microbiota community and proteomics. Main constituents and metabolites of AAE had different distribution in faeces and plasma. Interestingly, we observed different mechanism of hypoglycaemic effect with different doses, which did not followed dose-dependence theory. The effective components of AAE in the MD group are metabolites of flavonoids and saponins which mainly distributed in the gut. SCFA-producing bacteria increased in MD group, which can help to alleviate diabetes. Differing from MD group, the effects of HD group were mainly attributed to the components which can be absorbed into the blood. AAE in HD group might restore the damage of pancreatic islet cell. The results provide novel evidence for study multiple targets and multiple mechanism of A. asphodeloides with low bioavailability.