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Herb library · Spice · Gongronema latifolium

Utazi

A bitter-sweet climbing vine whose leaves season soups and salads in southern Nigeria and are taken across West Africa for blood sugar, blood pressure and the stomach. In one small study a utazi drink on its own did not change blood sugar after a glucose test.

Traditional use

Igbo cooks call the leaves utazi and Yoruba cooks arokeke; they season soups, sauces and salads, and flavor locally brewed beer. PROTA, the handbook of Plant Resources of Tropical Africa, records that across West Africa an infusion of the vine is taken for cough, worms, dysentery, indigestion and malaria and as an appetite tonic; that in Nigeria a leaf decoction is commonly taken for diabetes and high blood pressure, and a leafy-stem infusion is taken as a cleansing purge during Ramadan; and that people with asthma chew the fresh leaves for wheezing. Nigerian healers put it in blood-sugar recipes together with bitter leaf and scent leaf.

What studies show

  • Limited· shows no benefit

    Blood sugar: in a 2013 Nigerian study, 27 volunteers drank 150 mL of utazi decoction 45 minutes before a glucose tolerance test. On its own it did not significantly lower blood sugar at any time point (a 2.8% smaller area under the curve). Only a blend of utazi, bitter leaf and scent leaf made a small difference, and a blend is not evidence about utazi alone.

  • Insufficient

    Blood pressure, asthma, malaria and the other traditional uses: studies in rats and mice and in cells only.

Be careful of

Cautions

  • InteractionIf you take medicine for diabetes, anything taken for blood sugar needs your clinician's knowledge; utazi has been given alongside diabetes drugs only in animal studies. In a 2019 laboratory study, utazi extract only weakly blocked one liver enzyme that clears drugs (CYP1A2).
  • NoteAs a cooking leaf it is widely eaten. Concentrated extracts have not been tested for safety in people. A 2022 study of utazi from farmland near Ora-Eri, Nigeria, found arsenic in the leaves above the WHO/FAO limit, so where it is grown matters.
  • PregnancyThere is no safety information for medicinal amounts in pregnancy or breastfeeding.
  • Ask a clinicianTalk with a clinician or pharmacist before using this if you take prescription medicines, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are giving it to a child.

Sources

  1. Synergistic postprandial blood glucose modulatory properties of Vernonia amygdalina, Gongronema latifolium and Occimum gratissimum aqueous decoctions (J Ethnopharmacol, 2013) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  2. Potential inhibition of major human cytochrome P450 isoenzymes by selected tropical medicinal herbs — implication for herb-drug interactions (Food Sci Nutr, 2019) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  3. Pollution status, health risk assessment of potentially toxic elements in soil and their uptake by Gongronema latifolium in peri-urban of Ora-Eri, south-eastern Nigeria (Heliyon, 2022) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  4. Gongronema latifolium — PROTA4U record (uses) (opens in a new tab) · PROTA · read September 25, 2026
  5. Synergistic postprandial blood glucose modulatory properties of Vernonia amygdalina, Gongronema latifolium and Occimum gratissimum aqueous decoctions (J Ethnopharmacol, 2013) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026

Reviewed September 25, 2026.