HEALTH NEWS

Study Title:

Cinnamon Protects Kidneys

Study Abstract

The recently published article by Vafa et al., entitled “effects of cinnamon consumption on glycemic status, lipid profile and body composition in type 2 diabetic patients” in the esteemed Journal of Int J Prev Med had some interesting points, needs to explain more. In a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled clinical trial, which was conducted on 44 patients with type 2 diabetes, they, observed that, in the treatment group, the levels of fasting blood glucose, HbA1c, triglyceride, weight, body mass index and body fat mass decreased significantly compared to baseline. They suggested that cinnamon may have a moderate effect in improving glycemic status,[1] a finding that was in accord with the study of Mishra et al. too.[2] Recently in the study of Ullah et al., daily dose of cinnamon (200 mg/kg) was employed alone and in combination with gentamicin for a period of 21 days in rabbits. They observed that cinnamon significantly attenuated gentamicin-kidney toxicity by assessing the urea, creatinine, uric acid, urinary protein, and histopathological study of the kidneys. They suggested that cinnamon have strong kidney protective properties, especially against aminoglycosides.[3] Today, the clinical use of aminoglycosides is limited to special conditions. However, gentamicin as a well-known aminoglycoside can be used as a model to study of acute kidney injury in experimental animal models.[4,5,6] Thus, cinnamon might have renal protective effects in the conditions, acts like aminoglycoside renal toxicity. Various investigations containing our previous studies have shown that antioxidant agents satisfactory, inhibited or ameliorated gentamicin nephrotoxicity in the rat model.[7,8] Hence, it seems that cinnamon, have two distinct efficacy, protecting the renal tubular cells injurious substances and secondly blood glucose regulating property. While, nephropathy is one of the most important complications of diabetes mellitus,[9,10,11,12] thus using antioxidants especially safe herbal medicines is a useful adjunctive therapy.[13,14] Indeed, diabetes kidney disease is the result of injury to the glomeruli and tubulointerstitium, as well.[15,16,17,18,19] Thus cinnamon may have synergistic effects to exert its renoprotection in diabetic patients. In this regard, to better understand the cinnamon renoprotective properties, more experimental rat models or clinical studies are suggested.

Study Information

Hamid Nasri, Yahya Madihi, and Alireza Marikhi.
Commentary on: Effects of Cinnamon Consumption on Glycemic Status, Lipid Profile and Body Composition in Type 2 Diabetic Patients
Int J Prev Med
2013 May
University of West London, UK