Pharmacology of Indian Medicinal Plants

By Dr. Manish Kumar Verma and Dr. Rishi Kant

Aloe vera is India's most favorite herbal medicinal plant that is require low maintenance and easy to grow. The name of aloe is derived from Arabic word "Alloeh" meaning a shining bitter substance. Aloe vera belongs to the family Asphodelaceae (liliaceae) (Ghazanfar, 1994). It grows mainly in the dry regions of Africa, Asia, Europe and America. In India, it is found in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujrat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. Aloe vera is popular in Ayurvedic medicine (Richard, 2005). There are more than 300 species of aloe plants. This plant has yellow flower the leaves are arranged in rosette configuration. They are triangular and spear like and have thorny ridges. Aloe vera is a customary, dry spell dispute, sticky plant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book rivers
• Release date: Sep 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389914887

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Place:-  Lucknow 

Year:-  2020

MRP:-  249 /-

ISBN:- 978-93-89914-88-7

Copyright©:- Dr. Manish Kumar Verma,

Dr. Rishi Kant

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

PREFACE

Medicinal plant are important part of natural wealth. They have  important therepeutic property serve as important thereputic agent or raw material for several traditional and modern medicine. Ayurveda and other traditional literature mention about 1500 plants with medicinal uses and around 800 of these have been used as ethno medicine in the treatment of various human ailments. About two third of the Indian population is substantially depend on the herbal based remedies for the treatment of various ailments. India is considered to be bestowed with one of the richest flora in the world due to variation of climate and habitat across the country.

The aim of this book is mainly provide detailed information of Indian medicinal plant with their important therepeutic property. The book describe 13 important medicinal plant species of india with pharmacological effects including scintific name, vernacular name, general description; habitat, identification and description of plant chemical constituents, medicinal property and other uses of medicinal plants with photograps. we sincerely hope that this book will be usefull for those students and researchers who have interested in medicinal plant and development of new plant derived therepeutic agent.

ACRONYMS

m Meter

cm  Centimeter

mm Millimeter

ng Nano gram

mg Milligram

g Gram

kg Kilogram

⁰C Degree Celsius

TNF  Tumor necrotizing factor 

IL  Interleukin

COX cyclooxigenases

TG  Triglyceride

HDL High density lipid

LDL Low density lipid

hr  Hour

HT Hemagglutination titre

b.wt.  Body weight

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Content

Introduction

Ayurveda plays an important role in modern health care, specially where effective treatment is not available. There are numbers of herbal medicinal plants and formulations in the indigenous system of medicine which provide necessary beneficial effects. Humans have utilized plants not only as source of nutrition but also as a treatment against many diseases and ailments.

Out of the total 4, 20, 000 flowering plants reported from the world more than 50, 000 are used for medicinal purposes (Schippmann et al., 2002 and Govaerts, 2001) Indian flora is the richest in the world due to the broad range of favourable climate and habitat in the country. In India, about 18000 species of flowering plant are available which comprise 6-7 percent of the total plant species in the world. There are more than 3000 Indian plant species officially documented as possessing great medicinal potential. More than 70% of the Indian population still relies on these natural product derived medicines (Majid, 2014).

All plants produce complex physiologically active chemical substances as a part of their normal metabolic process. These phytochemical compounds have therapeutic actions in humans and animals which can be refined to produce drugs. In addition, the knowledge of the chemical constituents of plants would further be valuable in discovering the actual value of folkloric remedies (Faraz et al., 2003).

These chemical compounds are commonly termed as Secondary Metabolites and may include indoles, phytosterols, sesquiterpenes, glucans etc. Some secondary metabolites like alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides, volatile oils/ essential oils, gums, polysaccharides, phenols, tannins, terpenes, terpenoids, saponins and many other phytochemical substances possess medicinal properties and function as antioxidants, immunomodulatory agents or co-enzymes (Briskin, 2000; Maganha et al., 2010).

Herbal medicines are relatively cheaper and safe alternative treatment for various diseases since most of the synthetic drugs agents available in the market provide only symptomatic relief and have cytotoxic, immunosuppressant and variety of side effects (Fulzele et al., 2002).

Many natural products obtained from medicinal plants, or secondary metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenoids, phenolic acids, flavonoids, tannins, lignins, quinones, coumarins which exhibit potential antioxidant and other properties, have played an important role in treatment of cancer.

Ayurveda, one of the oldest systems of medical prescriptions, has recommended several plants and their products as ethno medicines and assumes them to contain properties of drug (Rasayan) with characteristics of restraining many diseases by modulation of immune responses. Previous research carried out on Rasayan herbs has validated various herbal medications which activate immune function without causing any disturbance in physiological homeostasis. Appropriate modulation of biological homeostasis in order to boost the ability to fight infection, counteract diseases, prevent cancer, and so forth, is the primary focus of Rasayan therapy (Kulkarni et al., 2016).

The compounds isolated from medicinal plants may either serve as lead molecules for development of safe and better drugs for the treatment of various diseases or may potentiate the efficacy of presently available synthetic drugs when used in combination. A large number of plants have been reported to possess good source of active principles possessing therapeutic values or exert beneficial pharmacological effects on the body thus described as Medicinal Plants.

In view of an increasing need to develop new effective herbal remedies or drugs for health care; traditional medicinal plants have recently received adequate attention globally by pharmaceutical companies and veterinary medical professionals. Herbal formulations are effective, relatively cheaper and safe alternative treatment for various diseases since most of the synthetic drugs available in the market provide only symptomatic relief and have untoward effects. Thus, efforts are being made to discover newer drugs from diversified plant kingdom to develop and provide therapeutic cure which would be free from undesirable side effects as well as economical and easily acceptable by medical professionals throughout the world.

Reference

Schippmann, U., Leaman, D.J. and Cunningham, A. B. 2002. Impact of cultivation and gathering of medicinal plants on Biodiversity: Global trends and issues. In (FAO). Biodiversity and Ecosystem Approach in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Satellite Event on the Occasion of the Ninth Regular Session of the Commission on Genetic Resources for food and Agriculture. Rome.

Govaerts, R. 2001. How many species of seed plants are there. Taxon, 50:1085-1090.

Majid Husain. 2014. Geography of India, McGraw-Hill Education p. 52. ISBN 9789351343578

Faraz, M., Mohammad, K., Naysaneh. G. and Hamid, R. V. 2003. Phytochemical Screening of Some Species of Iranian Plants, Iranian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research.77-82.

Briskin, D.P. 2000. Medicinal Plants and Phytomedicines. Linking Plant Biochemistry and Physiology to Human Health. Plant Physiology, Vol. 124, pp. 507–514.

Maganha, E .G., Halmenschlager, R. D. C., Rosa, R. M., Henriques, J. A. P., Ramos, A and Saffi, J. 2010. Pharmacological evidences for the extracts and secondary metabolites from plants of the genus Hibiscus. Food Chem.118: 1–10.

Kulkarni, S. S., Gowda, S., Desai, P. B., Hull, V. V., Math, A. A. and Vernekar, S. N. 2010. Markers of renal function tests. N Am J Med Sci, 2(4): 170-173.

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Aloe vera

Taxonomy

Image result for aloe vera plant

Aloe vera is India’s most favorite herbal medicinal plant that is require low maintenance and easy to grow. The name of aloe is derived from Arabic word Alloeh meaning a shining bitter substance. Aloe vera belongs to the family Asphodelaceae (liliaceae) (Ghazanfar, 1994). It grows mainly in the dry regions of Africa, Asia, Europe and America. In India, it is found in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujrat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. Aloe vera is popular in Ayurvedic medicine (Richard, 2005). There are more than 300 species of aloe plants. This plant has yellow flower the leaves are arranged in rosette configuration. They are triangular and spear like and have thorny ridges. Aloe vera is a customary, dry spell dispute, sticky plant.

Chemical Constituents

The most