Medicinal Plants Of Pakistan Research Articles

Evaluation of phytochemical and antioxidant potential of various extracts from traditionally used medicinal plants of Pakistan

AbstractThe antioxidant potential of various extracts was evaluated using different antioxidant assays such as 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay, ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay, and 2,2-azinobis-ethylbenzothiozoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) using UV spectrophotometer. The highest absorbance was observed in ethanolic extracts (EEs) ofEuphrasia stricta71.92 ± 1.22%, 65.77 ± 1.38%, and 67.88 ± 0.74%, followed by methanolic extracts (MEs) 70.14 ± 0.82%, 64.84 ± 0.74%, and 65.48 ± 1.40% for DPPH assay (517 nm), FRAP assay (700 nm), and ABTS assay (734 nm), respectively. The EEs ofEuphorbia platyphyllosL. showed the antioxidant activity of 69.76 ± 1.48%, 64.42 ± 0.88%, and 65.54 ± 1.36% and MEs 68.00 ± 1.50%, 62.92 ± 0.64%, and 63.42 ± 0.94% for DPPH, FRAP, and ABTS assays, respectively. So, this research suggested that these medicinal plants possess a significant antioxidant potential and are important source of natural antioxidants and can be effectively used in treating oxidative stress disorders.

Medicinal plants of Pakistan and their xanthine oxidase inhibition activity to treat gout: a systematic review

Gout is the most prevalent form of arthritis that arises due to hyperuricemia. Xanthine oxidase inhibitors (XOI) are usually prescribed to treat gout. Although treatment options are available, these therapies are associated with side effects, and natural remedies may be proven helpful in this regard. This systematic review aims to present consolidated information on the xanthine oxidase inhibition potential of the plants located in Pakistan. An extensive literature review reveals that no such study that systematically summarizes existing data is currently available. The present study is registered with PROSPERO (ID: CRD42021247416) and performed according to PRISMA guidelines. Several databases were searched (from January 2000 to April 2021) for the keywords, including "hyperuricemia", "xanthine oxidase inhibitory activity", ?medicinal plants", "gout", "Pakistan", "in vivo", and "in vitro". The SYRCLE?s RoB tool was used to assess the risk of bias. Total 22 articles met the inclusion criteria. Following plants had higher XO inhibitory activity (>75%); Bryophyllum pinnatum, Zingiber officinale, Laggera aurita, Trachyspermum ammi, Tribulus terrestris, Trianthema triquetra, and Croton sparsiflorus. Numerous phytochemicals were also identified, and the followings had potent activity; acacetin 1 (11.92 ± 0.01 µM), ranuncoside (IC50 = 11.69 µM), chrysin 2 (IC50= 73.74 ± 0.02 µM), methyl-3,4,5-trihydroxybenzoate (IC50= 59.5 µM), costinone A (IC50= 90.3 ± 0.06 µM), and umbelliferone (IC50= 97.12 ± 0.01 µM). This study will provide beneficial insight into medicinal plants and serve as a reference for future studies on gout treatment. A rigorous pharmacological and clinical evaluation of medicinal plants is required to gauge their efficacy and safety.

Antifungal Activity of Six Medicinal Plants of Pakistan Against Selected Fungi

Antifungal properties of Cucumis sativus, Portulaca oleracea, Malus baccata, Saxifraga flagillaris, Geranium wallichianum. and Monotheca buxifolia were evaluated against Alternaria, Acremonium, Verticillium, Pythium, and Trichoderma, using agar well-diffusion method. The crude ethanolic extract of G. wallichianum showed the highest antifungal activity followed by P. oleracae and S. flagillaris. The dichloromethane fraction of G. wallichianum showed the highest antifungal activity against Acremonium (28 mm), Alternaria (20.50 mm) and Trichoderma (20 mm). The n-hexane fraction of C. sativus showed the maximum antifungal activity (20 mm) against Pythium. The present findings demonstrated that six selected plants contain precious natural products for treating infectious diseases and can be used to isolate chemical compounds for future drug sources.
 Bangladesh J. Bot. 50(2): 441-443, 2021 (June)

In Vitro Cytotoxic Potential of Plant Terpenes and Selected Medicinal Plants of Pakistan against NIH 3T3 Cell Line.

Background: Medicinal plants are used in anticancer therapies from ages. The very first time we have not only screened anticancer medicinal plants from Pakistan but also identified anticancer plant terpenes. This study will definitely pave the way towards anticancer drug development after animal trials. Materials and Methods | This study was based on ethanolic extraction of fruits/seed of 25 plants. The cytotoxic potential of extracts and plant terpenes was evaluated against mouse fibroblasts (NIH 3T3) cell line by using MTT (3- [4, 5-dimethylthiazole-2-yl]-2, 5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide) assay and compared with cyclohexamide. Results | Ethanolic extracts were nontoxic against NIH3T3 cell line. On the basis of the % inhibition plants were graded as B.lycium, 48% > T.bellerica, 47% > C.verum, 45% > Z.tenuior, 39% > H. adenophyllum, 38% > C. carandas, 31% > C.behen, 29% > P. juliflora, 28% & P.granatum, 28% W.somnifera, 27% > E.cheiri, 26% > S. potatorum, 24% & M.incana, 24% > D. peregrina, 21% & B.lanzan, 21% > L. maldivica, 20% > F. lyrata, 18% > F.arabica, 16% & R. indica, 16% > C.absus, 13% & C.paniculatus, 13%. > C. diurnum, 12% > J.mimosifolia, 11% > D.malabarica, 8% > C. speciosa, 3% as compared to the reference drug Cyclohexamide, 70%. Whereas the maximum % inhibition was exhibited by n-Hexadecanoic acid (88%), followed by Hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester (16%) and Methyl decanoate displayed 11%. C50 of n-Hexadecanoic acid and Cyclohexamide was 3.1±0.2 and 0.8±0.2 respectively. Conclusion| Plant extracts and terpenes was found to be inactive against 3T3 cell line.

Anti-hypertensive plants of rural Pakistan:Current use and future potential

Aim Background: Hypertension is surging around the world and negatively affecting lives and livelihoods along its way. This plight is felt especially hard by the world’s rural population in developing nations where many barriers to medical care exist. These barriers can exhibit themselves as monetary or distance barriers. In Pakistan, where barriers to medical care caused by remoteness and financial hardship are strong, people have drawn on traditional medicinal plants to treat this plight of hypertension. Materials and Methods: In this review, we assess the interface between hypertension and plant-based medicine among a population with limited health care access. We queried the scientific databases of Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for the search terms: medicinal plants of Pakistan, ethnobotany of Pakistan, and ‘anti-hypertension plants of Pakistan’. Results: This search revealed 114 species used to combat hypertension in Pakistan. It also showed how the majority of species are harvested from sustainable aerial or leaf plant parts. Conclusion: The promotion of cultivation and validation studies may prove promising for these remedies that people in need of health care turn to.

Medicinal Plants of Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities

Medicinal Plants of Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities

Bioactive Compounds from Medicinal Plants and Their Importance in Drug Discovery in Pakistan

Humans have relied on nature throughout their ages to cater for their basic needs including medicines to cure a wide spectrum of diseases. Plants have formed the basis for sophisticated systems of traditional medicines. For therapeutic agents many of the presently known lead compounds are natural products or their derivatives. Ethnomedicinal studies play a vital role to discover new drugs from indigenous medicinal plants. Green pharmaceuticals are getting popularity and extraordinary importance because vast opportunities for new drug discoveries are provided by the unmatched availability of chemical diversity and natural products either as pure compounds or as homogenous plant extracts. Therefore, in recent years the demand for herbal medicines and several natural products from a variety of plant species is consistently increasing. In spite of being an agricultural country and having different ecological regions, the medicinal plants of Pakistan have not been explored for their secondary metabolites which are responsible for treating different diseases. Although, huge importance of different extracts of medicinal plants from Pakistan have been reported for their different activities such as antimicrobial, anti-cancerouse, antiviral and antioxidant but complete biochemical profiling of these medicinal plants is lacking. LC-MS and GC-MS techniques have been applied in the field of drug discovery from medicinal plants but in Pakistan its success rate is very low in the subject of biochemical profiling. Therefore, such techniques should be used in Pakistan to explore active constituents from medicinal plants which could be used as medicines in future.

Five Indigenous Plants of Pakistan with Antinociceptive, Anti‐Inflammatory, Antidepressant, and Anticoagulant Properties in Sprague Dawley Rats

Five medicinal plants of Pakistan were investigated for their antinociceptive, anti-inflammatory, antidepressant, and anticoagulant potential. Antinociceptive activity was estimated by hot plate and writhing assay. In hot plate assay, Quercus dilatata (52.2%) and Hedera nepalensis (59.1%) showed moderate while Withania coagulans (65.3%) displayed a significant reduction in pain. On the other hand, in writhing assay, Quercus dilatata (49.6%), Hedera nepalensis (52.7%), and Withania coagulans (62.0%) showed comparative less activity. In anti-inflammatory assays crude extracts showed significant edema inhibition in a dose dependent manner. In carrageenan assay, the highest activity was observed for Withania coagulans (70.0%) followed by Quercus dilatata (66.7%) and Hedera nepalensis (63.3%). Similar behavior was observed in histamine assay with percentage inhibitions of 74.3%, 60.4%, and 63.5%, respectively. Antidepressant activity was estimated by forced swim test and the most potent activity was revealed by Withania coagulans with immobility time 2.2s (95.9%) followed by Hedera nepalensis with immobility time 25.3s (53.4%). Moreover, the crude extracts of Fagonia cretica (74.6%), Hedera nepalensis (73.8%), and Phytolacca latbenia (67.3%) showed good anticoagulant activity with coagulation times 86.9s, 84.3s, and 67.5s, respectively. Collectively, the results demonstrate that these five plants have rich medicinal constituents which can be further explored.

DNA Fingerprinting of Essential Commercialized Medicinal Plants from Pakistan

Development of fingerprints based on DNA markers is necessary for proper identification and standardization of plant species. These techniques are widely used to develop an unquestionable method of plant identification to protect the patents and quality control for industry. In this study, fifteen commercially important medicinal plants of Pakistan were collected from botanical garden of Qarshi Industries (Pvt.) Ltd, Pakistan. The objective was to optimize the extraction of genomic DNA for use in a PCR-based random amplified polymorphic DNA marker approach. The initial protocol used 60 decamers to amplify scorable amplicons; only nine markers produced significant bands in genomic DNA of medicinal plants. These markers generated 51 bands ranging between 250 and 1600 bp. The most important property of genomic markers is polymorphism to enable specific identification; all the used markers showed 100% polymorphism across 15 different plants. Further, six decamers amplified specific bands to reliably identify 8 species. The amplified bands were arranged in a binary matrix and analyzed by DNAMAN version 5.2.2 statistical software. A homology tree was constructed using binary data for nine markers, and four major clusters/clades were observed. The Rose, Mentha and Stevia accessions had shown clear clustering and grouped in major clusters/clads I, II and III respectively. Sixty decamers amplified 51 polymorphic loci in the genomes of 15 commercially valuable accessions. Moreover clear phylogenetic construction was observed in the generation of homolog tree. This protocol could therefore be useful to provide a baseline to authenticate, identify and perform phylogenetic analysis of important medicinal plants used in the Pakistani herbal medicine industry.

Detection and Measurement of Zinc Concentrations in Selected Indigenous Medicinal Plants of Pakistan

Detection and Measurement of Zinc Concentrations in Selected Indigenous Medicinal Plants of Pakistan

Enlisting the scientifically unnoticed medicinal plants of Pakistan as a source of novel therapeutic agents showing anti-venom activity

Snake bite envenoming is a global occupational hazard and most of the people of the world trust in traditional medicine for snake poisoning. The present review elaborates scientifically un-investigated/ ignored medicinal plants of Pakistan showing chemical constituents of natural origin with possible mechanisms showing anti-venom activity. This review enlists 35 plants with their families, distribution in Pakistan, parts used traditionally for snake bite treatment and various active principles present in them. Compositae is the most excessive family, with 3 species, followed by Amaranthaceae, Apocynaceae, Asclepiadaceae, Caesalpinaceae, Labiatae, Pinaceae, Polygonaceae and Verbinaceae having 2 species of medicinal plants. While, one plant species belongs to each, Aizoaceae, Araceae, Boraginaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Flacourtiaceae, Gentianaceae, Malvaceae, Menispermaceae, Mimosaceae, Oxalidaceae, Papilionaceae, Plantaginaceae, Salvadoraceae and Solanaceae. As an antidote to snake poisoning, the traditional use of leaves (35%) is higher than roots (25%), whole plant (21%), flower (7%), wood (5%), fruit (5%) and milky juice (2%). Among life forms of plants, herbs (55%) are more excessively used as snake bite remedy than shrubs (31%) and trees (14%). This article may help the researchers to bring novelty in the field of natural products for the treatment of snake bite. However, chemical and pharmacological studies are necessary to confirm the anti-venom claims about these medicinal plants of Pakistan. Key words: Venom, anti-venom, herbal remedy, scientific characterization.

DOCUMENTATION OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT MEDICINAL PLANTS OF PAKISTAN

Indigenous knowledge of wild and cultivated plant use is linked to local culture and history. It should be regarded as a body of knowledge that has continually developed over time without the outside assistance of formal science. Pakistan has 18 different types of ecological zones with a variety of habitat types like the coastal Mangrove forests, the desert subtropical foothills dry and moist areas, the alpine pastures etc. with diverse ethnic composition and ancient civilization. It has rich flora of over 6000 species of flowering plants, conifers and ferns with about 4000 fungal species and 1000 algae are so far reported to occur in different provinces including Kashmir. A very large number is found in northern and northwestern parts of the country. It was estimated in early 1950 that up to 84% of the Pakistani population is dependent on traditional medicine for all or most of their medical needs. Even now, in some parts of the reported area the percentage may be the same or even higher. Western-style allopathic medicines are relatively expensive compared to the traditional herbal medicine, and for people living in hilly areas, usually not available. The use of medicinal plants to cure diseases and relieve physical suffering of both humans and animals, goes back to ancient times. It has been reported that approximately 400-600 medicinal plants are more frequently used in herbal preparations and while several species, which are common in certain areas, are known to be used locally in traditional preparations, they have not been scientifically investigated for wider use. A lot more work therefore needs to be done with regard to collecting and compiling indigenous knowledge of plants, especially amongst living in the western mountains.

Medicinal plants research in Pakistan.

Out of about 258,650 species of higher plants reported from the world; more than 10% are used to cure ailing communities. Beside many known drugs (e.g.tubocurarine, reserpine, aspirin and morphine etc) are discovered based on traditional knowledge. Majority of the people in Pakistan rely on medicinal plants to find treatment for their minor, even in some cases major diseases. Some wild plants are now being commonly used e.g. Ephedra, Artimisia, St. John’s wort,Hippophae beside some that have been domesticated e.g. Garlic, Ginseng and Cumin etc. There is a local market system (Pansara) specifically dealing with medicinal plants business in Pakistan and several plants are exported. Plants having active constituents are used to treat various ailments in both human and animal. In most instances, certain plant species are considered specific for a particular illness but occasionally they have mixed usage. Women, followed by children, are identified as the principal collectors of medicinal plants. Due to over-collection, several species have gone extinct in the Hindukush-Himalayan regions. Local collectors, vendors, herbal drug dealers and others are the ones who threaten the flora of Pakistan contribute (though unknowingly) to the extinction of some and bringing others to the brink of extinction. Though medicinal plants from wild are important source of income for local communities, but if not properly managed, this may lead to the destruction of habitat and in return extinction of species. There is therefore, a need to find ways to harvest medicinal plants sustainably from the wild, train local collectors (in proper collection techniques, train the people in growing medicinal plants, and remove some of the middlemen from the trading chain. In the present article, an effort was made to review the status of medicinal plants research in Pakistan. Key words: Medicinal plants of Pakistan, research and development, conservational issues, marketing, problems and prospects.

In vitro enzyme inhibition activities of crude ethanolic extracts derived from medicinal plants of Pakistan

Twenty two crude ethanolic extracts from 14 indigenous medicinal plants were subjected to enzyme inhibition screening against acetylcholinesterase (AChE), butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and lipoxygenase enzymes (LO). Three extracts showed activity against AChE, nine extracts were found to be active against BChE and four extracts inhibited the enzyme LO. The most significant inhibition activities (≥50%) were found in extracts derived from Aloe vera (leaves), Alpinia galanga (rhizome), Curcuma longa (rhizome), Cymbopogon citratus (leaves), Ocimum americanum (leaves), Ocimum americanum (stem) and Withania somnifera (roots).

New natural products from medicinal plants of Pakistan

Abstract

Applications of modern 2D-NMR techniques in structure elucidation of natural products

Abstract