Considering the increasing prevalence of diabetes in Iran and tendency of patients toward using herbal medicines instead of conventional (chemical) pharmaceuticals, the current study aimed at evaluating the effect of herbal medicine of Diabites (including nettle leaf, blackberry leaf, garlic powder, fenugreek powder, walnut leaf, and cinnamon powder) on the level of blood sugar in patients with diabetes. According to the results of the study, the intervention mainly affected fasting blood sugar (FBS), 2 hours post-prandial blood sugar (2hppBS), and hemoglobin A1c (HBA1c), followed by systolic and diastolic blood pressures, homeostasis model assessment-estimated insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), urea, creatinine, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), C-reactive protein (CRP), triglyceride (TG), cholesterol (CHOL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) as the secondary effects. The current double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, a single-center study, was conducted on 76 patients with diabetes, in the age range of 25 to 70 years. The study cases included the patients with diabetes referred to the Oncology Clinic at Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom, Iran. The patients were the candidates for insulin injection, but had no willingness to inject. At the beginning of the study, the cases were assigned to 2 groups of experiment and placebo, by the random block sampling method. The experiment group received Diabites 3 times a day, each time 1 capsule, in addition to the previously prescribed medicines, and the placebo group received the placebo by the same program in addition to the previously prescribed medicines for 12 weeks.
The inclusion criteria were: the age range of 25 to 70 years for both genders, FBS >130 mg/dL and 2hppBS >180 mg/dL; having cardiovascular, renal, and/or liver diseases were also considered as the exclusion criteria.