Hypoglycemic Effect of Fermented Soymilk Extract in STZ-induced Diabetic Mice

This study investigated the hypoglycemic effect of fermented soymilk extract (FSE) in STZ-induced diabetic mice. FSE was prepared via fermentation of soymilk with Bacillus subtilis followed by methanol extraction. The hypoglycemic effect was determined by inhibitory activities against ${\alpha}$-glucosidase and ${\alpha}$-amylase as well as the alleviation of postprandial glucose level. The non-fermented soymilk extract (SE) was used as control in this experiment. FSE showed higher (p<0.05) inhibitory activities than SE against ${\alpha}$-glucosidase and ${\alpha}$-amylase. The $IC_{50}$ values of FSE for ${\alpha}$-glucosidase and ${\alpha}$-amylase were 0.77 ancd 0.94 mg/mL, respectively, which were comparable or even superior to those of acarbose (0.79 and 0.68 mg/mL, respectively). In addition, a further suppression on the postprandial blood glucose levels were observed in the FSE than SE group for both STZ-induced diabetic mice and normal mice. Furthermore, FSE significantly lowered the incremental area under the curve (AUC) in the diabetic mice and the AUC in normal mice corroborated the hypoglycemic effect of FSE (p<0.05). Results from this study suggest that FSE may help decrease the postprandial blood glucose level via inhibiting ${\alpha}$-glucosidase and ${\alpha}$-amylase and the usefulness of FSE was proven to be better than SE.