This review aims to present the information related to chemical composition of Momordica charantia Linn. (Cucurbitaceae), which is used in many Asian countries as a traditional functional food and medicine especially for the treatment of diabetes mellitus. Our main objective was to collect information about active constituents of this plant. Review of literature included PubMed searches with Momordica charantia, Bitter gourd or Bitter melon as initial key words. The search was further refined by looking for terms such as Constituents (or composition) and Activity (or effect) within the results. The earliest report of the chemical screening of M. charantia dates back to 1960. Since then several classes of compounds including cucurbitacins, sterols, alkaloids, proteins and triterpenoids have been isolated.
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Mir et al. (2017) studied this question.
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