01 Identity and provenance
- Accepted binomial
- Momordica charantia
- Common names
- Karela (Bitter gourd)
- Family (APG IV)
- Cucurbitaceae
- Part used
- Fruit
- Verification tier
- Tier 2 · Verified Clinical columns reviewed and a source is on record.
- Reviewer note (2026 audit)
- LiverTox NBK590483 | Meta-analysis: PMC10808600 | VERIFIED 2026 - synthetic analogue, application, interactions, side effects and references populated from retrieved primary/regulatory sources (see References). Interaction entries are labelled CLINICAL (case reports or trials in humans) vs THEORETICAL (in-vitro or animal only). Marketed-formulation column intentionally left blank. | HOST FACTOR
02 Constituent chemistry
| Chemical class | Marker compound | Synthetic analogue in use |
|---|---|---|
| Cucurbitane triterpenoids | Charantin
Fruit
|
Metformin, insulin secretagogues (FUNCTIONAL only). No structural analogue. |
The analogue column is what makes the interaction reasoning tractable: where a constituent has a marketed structural counterpart, the counterpart's interaction profile is the starting hypothesis for the plant.
03 Stated application
- Reported activity
- Traditionally used as a glucose-lowering agent in T2DM and prediabetes. IMPORTANT: 2024 meta-analysis of 9 RCTs (n=414) found NO significant effect on fasting glucose or HbA1c versus placebo. Efficacy is not established.
- Reported adverse effects
- Hypoglycaemic coma and convulsions reported in children after leaf tea. Favism-like haemolytic anaemia in G6PD deficiency (vicine in seeds) - RELEVANT IN SOUTH ASIAN POPULATIONS. Also GI upset, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, headache; one case of haematemesis after concentrated extract.
04 Interaction matrix
Source column, verbatim: CLINICAL: additive effect with any glucose-lowering agent.
Normalised onto 0 canonical drug classes below.
No interaction edges recorded, and the constituent chemistry did not trigger any rule. That is an absence of data, not evidence of safety.
05 Hazard register
06 Confusable material
These entries could be mistaken for this one in trade, in the herbarium, or in a prescription. Powdered material is often indistinguishable, so the check is macroscopic, microscopic and chromatographic rather than nominal.
| Citrus aurantium
Bitter Orange |
Rutaceae | Shares the common name "bitter" |
07 Mechanism map
Chemistry sorts to the left, pharmacology to the right. Dashed edges are predicted. Drag nodes, scroll to zoom, export at 3× for a figure.
08 Open literature
Abstract-scoped query built from this binomial, its common names and its marker compounds, run live against Europe PMC, PubMed and OpenAlex, then ranked locally against an evidence hierarchy.
09 Isomechanistic neighbours
No overlapping interaction profile in the corpus.
10 References and notes
Source column: Basch E et al. Am J Health Syst Pharm 2003;60:356-9
Basch E et al. Am J Health Syst Pharm 2003
60:356-9
BibTeX for all 2 records
@article{BaschEeta2003,
title = {Basch E et al. Am J Health Syst Pharm 2003},
author = {Basch E et al.},
journal = {Am J Health Syst Pharm},
year = {2003},
}
@article{anon,
title = {60:356-9},
}
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