Alieh Safamanesh - Ph.D. student, Department of Biology, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Irana
Shahrbanoo Oryan - Professor, Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran,iran
Ramesh Ahmadi - Assistant Professor, Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Islamic Azad University of Qom, Qom, Iran
Kazem Parivar - Professor, Department of Biology, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Apoptosis as a key cellular process has the main role in diabetes type 2 associated with insulin resistance by decreasing functional beta-cell mass. Thus finding factors that affect this process is demanding. Natural compounds especially secondary metabolites from plants are common candidates for the purpose. For this study, eight groups (n=8) of male Wistar rats (250-300 gr) were selected and Peganum harmala methanolic extracts from leaves and seeds gavaged to them. Diabetes condition was induced by i.p injection of streptozotocin (70 mg/kg) and Flow cytometry was used to evaluate the apoptosis of beta -cells. Our results indicated that seed extract of P. harmala reduces apoptosis in beta cells thus can be beneficial in diabetic complications by increasing beta-cell mass. Our findings suggest that the selected doses of treatments in experimental groups have side effects. Therefore, the administration of doses of drugs in healthy rats is not recommended. In other words, the same dose of extracts administration on the pancreas of healthy and diabetic rats had different effects.

Type II diabetes, Apoptosis, Pancreas, Peganum harmala