Tamarindus indica L. commonly known as Tamarind is widely used as a traditional medicine for the management of diabetes mellitus beside its antihepatotoxic and anti-inflammatory activity. However, the influence of Tamarind seed on diabetic hypertension and mechanisms involved in antioxidant and hypolipidemic action was not evaluated so far. The objective of the present investigation was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of aqueous extract of Tamarind seeds (TSE) in Streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic hypertension superimposed by deoxycorticosterone salt (DOCA) in unilateral nephrectomised rats. Diabetic hypertension was produced by administration of single dose of STZ (90 mg/kg, i. p.) to 2 day old neonatal rat followed by unilateral nephrectomy and DOCA injection (40 mg/kg once a week; s.c; for 4 weeks) after 6 weeks of diabetic screening. Graded doses of TSE (120 and 240 mg/kg) treatment for 4 weeks showed a significant reduction in blood pressure (BP systolic, diastolic, and mean), heart rate, serum low density lipoproteins (LDL), cholesterol and improvement in high density lipoproteins (HDL) levels. TSE significantly increased antioxidant enzyme level of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione. The extract significantly decreased elevated levels of serum nitric oxide (NO) in diabetic hypertensive rats. In conclusion, the data in present study reveals that TSE posses moderate antihypertensive action and this activity may be through sympathoinhibition rather than a direct action on vascular smooth muscle, also the antioxidant property of the extract leads to lowering of lipid load which might contribute to its hypotensive effect.
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