Strawberry juice and diabetes in lab rats
What it found
In diabetic rats, strawberry juice lowered blood glucose and raised insulin, and improved cholesterol and liver and kidney markers.
The work was done in animals, not people.
What they found
Animal and lab studies
Blood glucose and insulin
Diabetic rats given strawberry juice had a significant fall in blood glucose and a significant rise in insulin compared with untreated diabetic rats.
Cholesterol and fats
Diabetic rats given strawberry juice had higher HDL cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol, triglycerides and VLDL cholesterol than untreated diabetic rats.
Liver and kidney markers
Strawberry juice brought raised liver enzymes AST and ALT back to near normal, and lowered raised creatinine, uric acid and urea. The kidney improvement was smaller than with metformin.
Oxidative stress and inflammation
Strawberry juice raised the antioxidant enzymes GSH, SOD and CAT, lowered MDA (a marker of lipid peroxidation), and reduced the inflammatory markers IL-6 and TNF-alpha in diabetic rats.
Pancreas and liver tissue
Under the microscope, diabetic rats had damaged pancreas and liver tissue. After 56 days of strawberry juice, the pancreas and liver looked nearly normal.
Other findings
Compounds in the juice
The juice was rich in phenolic compounds and flavonoids, including catechol, syringenic, rutin and quercetin, and showed antioxidant activity in lab tests.
What the authors conclude
“These findings suggest that strawberry juice has considerable hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects on rats with diabetes which may be used in human after further investigations.”
Also in their conclusions
- They say strawberry juice can reduce blood glucose by stimulating pancreatic beta cells to make more insulin.
- They say it can lower inflammation and oxidative stress by reducing IL-6 and TNF-alpha and raising antioxidant enzymes.
- They propose strawberry juice as a functional food that may help prevent diabetes and high cholesterol, and say it may be used in humans after further investigations.
How it was done
The authors say diabetes and obesity are major modern health problems, and current medicines are costly, can have harmful effects and often do not work well enough. They wanted to test a simple dietary option.
Diabetes was induced in 50 male rats with a single injection of streptozotocin. The rats were split into five groups: normal control, strawberry juice only, diabetic control, diabetic plus strawberry juice, and diabetic plus metformin. The rats were given a single dose of strawberry juice or metformin, and blood, tissue and microscope tests were done.
What it can’t tell you
- This was a study in rats, so it cannot show what strawberry juice does in people.
- The rats were given a single dose of strawberry juice, so the results do not show what taking it over a long period would do.
- The authors themselves say human studies are needed before any conclusions can be drawn for people.
Who paid
- Conflicts
- The authors declare no competing interests.
- Authors work at
- Minia University, Egypt
The paper
- Title
- The Hypoglycemic and Hypolipidemic Effects of Polyphenol-Rich Strawberry Juice on Diabetic Rats
- Type
- Study
- Evidence
- Animals and lab studies
- Summarised from
- Full text
- Cite
- Gazwi HSS, Hassan MS, Ismail HA, El-Naem GFA, Tony SK (2023). The Hypoglycemic and Hypolipidemic Effects of Polyphenol-Rich Strawberry Juice on Diabetic Rats. Plant foods for human nutrition (Dordrecht, Netherlands). doi:10.1007/s11130-023-01079-1Free full textPubMed 37462847DOI
Summary written 26 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error