Several botanicals, including Crataegus oxycantha, Terminalia arjuna, Inula racemosa, and Astragalus membranaceus, have been found to have therapeutic benefit for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Crataegus oxycantha has been used traditionally as a cardiac tonic and current uses include treatment for angina, hypertension, arrhythmias, and congestive heart failure. Animal studies have al...

     The chloroform soluble fractions of ethanolic extracts of five Inula belonging to the Compositae family were evaluated for cytotoxic activity against five different cell lines including CACO2 (human colon adenocarcinoma), MCF7 (human breast adenocarcinoma), HEPG2 (human hepatocellular carcinoma), VERO (green African monkey kidney) and WEHI164 (balb c mouse fibrosarcoma). Cytotoxic...

Forty four extracts from sixteen plants used traditionally as anticancer agents were evaluated in vitro for their antiproliferative activity against Hep-2, MCF-7, and Vero cell lines. Plants were fractionated using ethanol, methanol, chloroform, n-hexane, distilled water, and butanol. The antiproliferative activity was measured by MTT assay. TLC was used to identify active fractions. The apopto...

BOTANY Ageratum is derived from the Greek “a geras,” meaning non-aging, referring to the longevity of the flowers or the whole plant. The specific epithet “conyzoides” is derived from “kónyz,” the Greek name of Inula helenium, which it resembles (Kissmann and Groth 1993). The synonyms of A. conyzoides include A. album Stend; A. caeruleum Hort. ex. Poir.; A. coeruleum Desf.; A. cordifolium Roxb....

Isotenulin, C17H22O5, is a sesquiterpene lactone isolated from sneezeweed Helenium amarum. It crystallizes with two independent mol-ecules in the asymmetric unit. In each mol-ecule, two five-membered rings (cyclo-pentenone and lactone) are trans-fused to the central seven-membered ring. The five-membered rings each adopt envelope conformations. The seven-membered ring adopts a twist-chair confo...