**13. Conclusion**

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder in the endocrine system. It is known to be a dreadful disease that is found in all parts of the world with a serious threat to the health of mankind. Diabetes mellitus affect most of the people of both developed and developing countries. There are lots of synthetic drugs that have been used to control and to treat diabetic patients with partial recovery from this dreaded disease. Alternative to these synthetic agents, plants provide a potential source of hypoglycemic drugs and are widely used in several traditional systems of medicine to prevent diabetes. Several medicinal plants have been investigated for their beneficial use in different types of diabetes. Several phytonutrients have been identified from medicinal plants and this presents an exciting opportunity for the development of new types of therapeutics for diabetes mellitus. Most abundant phytonutrients present in medicinal plants are the alkaloids, terpenes, and phenolics. Phytomedicine has been used since ancient time in many parts of the world where access to modern medicine is limited. Despite consid‐ erable progress in the treatment of diabetes by oral hypoglycemic agents, search for newer drugs continues because the existing synthetic drugs have several limitations as shown in table 1. The treatment of diabetes with synthetic drugs in the developing countries is expensive due to poverty and lack of access to Medicare. Hence, phytotherapy has significant role to play in the developing countries compared to synthetic drugs because it is safe, less expensive and available as a gift of nature.
