Anti-inflammatory Activity of Ethno-Botanical Plants Used as Traditional Medicine: A Review.

Abstract

Herbs are staging a comeback and herbal „renaissance‟ is happening all over the globe. The herbal products today symbolise safety in contrast to the synthetics that are regarded as unsafe to human and environment .Inflammation is one of the body unique mechanisms that help body to protect itself against infection, burn, toxic chemicals, allergens or other noxious stimuli. However, over reaction of the body reaction may be harmful or undesirable. This has lead to extensive development of anti-inflammatory drugs. Now a day world population moves towards herbal remedies for treatment of such ailments. The several side effects of steroidal and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs evoked us to search for new anti-inflammatory agents from natural botanical sources that may have minimal side effects. The number of plants has been screened for their anti-inflammatory, but only few of them reached up to the clinical level. This review article focuses on our current knowledge of plants which have anti-inflammatory activity and discusses their potential therapeutic use in the management relevant inflammatory diseases.