Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is a commonly used food spice in many Asian and African countries. Several studies have demonstrated that ginger is endowed with hypoglycaemic properties under normal and diabetic conditions (Alli et al, 2008). Treatment with ginger extract produced a significant reduction in fasting blood glucose, serum lipids and glucose intolerance in diabetic rats (Akhani et al, 2004). Although oxidative stress and inflammation are reportedly involved in the pathophysiology of diabetes mellitus(Perez – Matute et al, 2009), it is not known if ginger’s anti-diabetic effect modulates antioxidant enzyme activity and inflammatory cytokines under diabetic condition. This study employed streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats to investigate the impact of aqueous and ethanol extracts of ginger on activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione (GSH) as well as malonaldehyde (MDA) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) level. Diabetic rats were intra-gastrically given aqueous ginger extract (AGE 250 or 500 mg/kg) and ethanol ginger extract (EGE 250 or 500 mg/kg) daily for 42 consecutive days. A separate group of diabetic rats given placebo served as positive control. Blood glucose measurement was determined using glucose oxidase method and TNF-alpha was assayed using ELISA kits. Oxidative analyses of the liver homogenate were carried out using previously described standard methods (Morakinyo et al 2011). Data are expressed as mean± S.E.M., compared by ANOVA followed by Tukey Kramer post-hoc test. Both fractions of the ginger extracts employed significantly reduce the blood glucose level of treated rats compared with placebo-treated diabetic rats (110±12.37 mg/dl for AGE 250 and 115±9.72 mg/dl for EGE 250 vs 338±10.27 mg/dl for placebo). The treated diabetic rats which had received AGE and EGE showed significantly (p < 0.05) increased SOD, CAT and GSH activities. The extracts however produced a significant decrease in MDA (1.38±0.05 nmol/mg for AGE 250 and 1.39±0.08 nmol/mg for EGE 250 vs 1.76±0.07 nmol/mg for placebo) and TNF-alpha (6.82±0.23 pg/ml for AGE 250 and 6.94±0.27 pg/ml for EGE 250 vs 8.21±0.32 pg/ml for placebo) level at the end of the experiments. These data therefore suggest that the mechanism of anti-diabetic effect of ginger may in part involve suppression of oxidative stress and inflammation respectively through the enhancement of endogenous antioxidant activities and reduction of inflammatory cytokines.