background: cutaneous leishmaniasis is an important health problem caused by leishmania spp . as there is no vaccine, drug treatment is the only way to tackle leishmaniasis. in the present study, inhibitory and kill­ing effects of peganum harmala and alkana tinctoria extracts on amastigotes and promastigotes forms of leishmania were evaluated in-vitro. methods: the seeds of peganum harmala, ste...

BACKGROUND Plants are rich source of chemical compounds that are used to accomplish biological activity. Indigenously crude extracts of plants are widely used as herbal medicine for the treatment of infections by people of different ethnic groups. The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the biological potential of Alkanna tinctoria leaves extract from district Charsadda, Pakistan ...

Alkanna is a traditional medicinal plant; Bedouin of Saudi Arabia use the roots of the plant for the treatment of many skin diseases. Water and ethanol extracts of Alkanna roots were evaluated for their antibacterial activity against four pathogenic bacteria responsible for skin infections i.e. Pseudomonas areuginosa ATCC 27853, Bacillus subtilis (clinical strain), Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 a...

In a continuing program to discover new anticancer agents from plants, especially naphthoquinones from the Alkanna genus, Alkanna cappadocica was investigated. Bioassay-guided fractionation of a dichloromethane/methanol (1:1) extract of the roots led to the isolation of four new and four known naphthoquinones. The known compounds are 11-deoxyalkannin (1), , -dimethylacrylalkannin (2), 11-O-acet...

BACKGROUND A prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted to compare the healing effectiveness of Alkanna tinctoria (L.) Tausch (Boraginaceae) with standard dressing on wound healing at the donor site after removal of the skin graft. METHODS Enrolled patients were randomly allocated to receive topicalA. tinctoria extract ointment (20%) or standard dressing (dressin...

Lithospermum erythrorhizon cell cultures have been used to produce plant secondary metabolites, as well as in biosynthetic studies. Shikonin, a representative secondary metabolite of L. erythrorhizon, was first produced industrially by dedifferentiated cell cultures in the 1980s. This culture system has since been used in research on various plant secondary metabolites. Other boraginaceaeous pl...

An Alkanna orientalis leaf and flower extract inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogen that causes an estimated 478 000 hospitalizations in the US annually. Bioassay-guided fractionation of A. orientalis resulted in isolation of the flavonoid sarothrin (5,7,4'-trihydroxy-3,6,8-trimethoxyflavone), which inhibited the growth of Mycobacterium smegmatis (MIC 75 µM) and S. aureus (M...