Diabetes mellitus is a common metabolism disease which can seriously destroy human’s health. It is our advantage to prevent and treat diabetes mellitus with traditional chinese medicine. Coptis chinesis is one of the traditional chinese herbs which can treat diabetes mellitus. In recent years

its new pharmacological actions have been reported

which are antitumour

hypoglycemic response

improving the functions of cardiovascular

and so on. Hypoglycemic response is one of the important pharmacological functions of C.chinesis. With the deeply researching of C.chinesis pharmacology

and the continuous founding of pharmacological mechanism

new preparation will be widely applied in the clinic. This paper reviewed the experiments of the compounds containing C. chinensis treating diabetes and its complications in nearly 10 years. It provides reference for the further study and clinical application.