The Antidiabetic and Antioxidant Effects of Carotenoids:A Review

Carotenoids are a big group of phytochemicals that have a wide variety of protective and medical properties. They are widespread in plants and photosynthetic bacteria and have many medical functions. Here in this article, we studied antidiabetic and antioxidant effects of four kinds of carotenoids (lutein, lycopene, beta-carotene and astaxanthin) besides briefly defining them and also mentioned some of their plant sources. So, we can say, the aim of this study was to show some of the ways they can lower blood glucose and prevent the oxidant damages. Many articles, including originals and reviews were scanned in this way, but only a few had a suitable data. All of our references were articles has been collected electronically from valid journals and databases including PubMed, Science Direct, Elsevier, Springer and Google scholar. Beta-carotene is the most widely carotenoid in food prevent cancer and triggers the release of insulin and like lutein its antioxidant is useful for the prevention of macular degeneration. Lutein has also anticancer effects and reduces the ROS levels in the retina with diabetes. Lycopene helps to protect diabetes patients with cardiovascular disease. Astaxanthin has significant hypoglycemic effects. Both of lycopene and astaxanthin have powerful antioxidant activity. We suggest that each of these phytochemicals produces a kind of protect against diabetes and oxidative damages and also have other medical functions like anticancer, anti-inflammatory but further and deeper investigations are required in this field.