Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) is now generally perceived to be the dominant operating system in conventional medicine. It is unsurprising then that some have counseled complementary and alternative medicine practitioners to resist EBM . The efficacy of medicinal herbs does need to be established and toxicity, contraindications and side effects also need to be investigated, and this is best done...

Using a subtractive hybridization approach, differentially expressed genes involved in the light response in saffron stigmas were identified. Twenty-two differentially expressed transcript-derived fragments were cloned and sequenced. Two of them were highly induced by light and had sequence similarity to early inducible proteins (ELIP) and SOUL heme-binding proteins. Using these sequences, we s...

Considering the global popularity and also the various biological and medicinal properties of saffron, this study was conducted to assess the influence of its aqueous extracts administration on blood pressure, pressure-rate product (PRP) and electrocardiogram (ECG) indices of rat. Animals were divided to control (CTL), SAF50, SAF100, and SAF200 groups that orally received tap water, aqueous ext...

A procedure allowing hydrolysis reactions to be conducted in a dynamic supercritical-CO2 medium was developed for quantifying total safranal (viz. free safranal present in the sample+safranal resulting from picrocrocin hydrolysis), which are the main component of the essential oil and responsible for the characteristic aroma of saffron. The proposed method allows total safranal amounts over the...

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a retinal neurodegenerative disease whose development and progression are the results of a complex interaction between genetic and environmental risk factors. Both oxidative stress and chronic inflammation play a significant role in the pathogenesis of AMD. Experimental studies in rats with light-induced photoreceptors degeneration demonstrated that saf...

Introduction: Vincristine (VCR) is potential anti-cancer drug that is highly toxic for renal tissue. This study aimed to evaluate the protective effect of alcoholic extract of saffron stigma against vincristine renal toxicity in male rats. Methods: A total number of 50 rats were randomly divided into 10 groups. Different doses of VCR (0.25, 0.5 and 0.75mg/kg) and saffron (0.5 and ...

results saffron extracts markedly (p < 0.05) decreased the serum total cholesterol (tc, 90 ± 9.3), triglyceride (tg, 99 ± 10.5), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c, 27 ± 1.1) in obese rats, while they increased the serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c, 68 ± 2.2). the atherosclerosis-index (ldl/hdl, 0.39 ± 0.5), atherogenic index (tc/hdl, 1.32 ± 4.2), and the liver enzym...

antimicrobial activity of different parts of croccus sativus l. (saffron) including stigma, stamen, leaves and colora, extracted by various solvents, were tested against different bacteria (microccucos luteus, staphylococcus epidermitis, staphylococcus aureus and e. coli) and fungi (candida albicans, aspergillus niger and cladospourium sp) by cup plate diffusion method. minimal inhibitory conce...

saffron or crocus sativus l. (c. sativus) has been widely used as a medicinal plant to promote human health, especially in asia. the main components of saffron are crocin, picrocrocin and safranal. the median lethal doses (ld50) of c. sativus are 200 mg/ml and 20.7 g/kg in vitro and in animal studies, respectively. saffron has been suggested to be effective in the treatment of a wide range of d...