The pharmaceutical industry is facing serious challenges as the drug discovery process is becoming extremely expensive, riskier and critically inefficient. A significant shift from single to multi targeted drugs especially for polygenic syndromes is being witnessed. Strategic options based on natural product drug discovery, ethnopharmacology and traditional medicines are re-emerging to offer go...

To increase the understanding of the ethnopharmacology of a single species, elaboration of dispersed primary data is required. Tamarindus indica L. (Fabaceae), or tamarind, is a common tree, especially in West Africa, with a good potential to contribute to affordable local health care based on traditional medicine (TM). For this single species review, more than 60 references with detailed infor...

BACKGROUND Value chain analyses are commonly used to understand socioeconomic and power relationships in the production chain from the initial starting material to a final (generally high value) product. These analyses help in terms of understanding economic processes but also have been used in the context of socioeconomic and socioecological research. AIMS OF THE STUDY However, there is a ga...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive cancer with a dismal outcome largely due to metastasis and postsurgical recurrence. Thus, the inhibition of invasion and metastasis is of great importance in its therapies. Medicinal plants or ethnopharmacology used in folklore medicine continue to be an important source of discovery and development of novel or potential therapeutic agents for tre...

Ficus carica L. (Moraceae) is a plant of great importance in the traditional Arab medicine thanks to its therapeutic properties. This work was carried out in order to contribute to the ethnopharmacological knowledge of this medicinal species. We describe phytochemical compounds and ethnopharmacological properties of F. carica, species that has been used in traditional medicine for many decades....

One can argue forever what precise percentage of the world's population use local and traditional medicines. These herbal (or mineral or fungal or occasionally animal) medical products form systems of knowledge and practice that have been transmitted over centuries and which continuously change. However, there can be no doubt that the majority of humans either rely on such products (often due t...

Cystone, a polyherbal Ayurvedic preparation, was found to protect rats partially but significantly against cisplatin-induced renal toxicity, when given intraperitoneally 1 hour before cisplatin. At 500 and 1000 μg/ml, it also inhibited lipid peroxidation induced by cisplatin in renal cortical slices by 62.7 and 71.6% respectively. The rats pretreated with Cystone (1000 mg/kg i.p.) had significa...