Wound management is important as it helps to promote healing without microbial infection. Euphorbia hirta, a species of Euphorbiaceae family, also known as Ara tanah among Malaysians, is traditionally used to promote wound healing where its poultice is applied to the sores on the legs, bruises and wounds. Several reported pharmacological properties including antioxidant, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anti-anaphylactic activities have been reported on this plant. The aim of this review was to evaluate the wound healing effects of E. hirta. Information involving only in vivo studies on wound healing effect of E. hirta was searched using electronic databases. The electronic databases include PubMed, Google Scholar, Ovid, CENTRAL, LILACS, and ClinicalTrials.gov from year 1962 to 2020. A total of five out of 70 studies were included and assessment was made. All included articles studied different wound models in rats. All showed significant wound healing activity with different mechanism of action for incision, excision and dead space wound. Quality assessment of the included studies suggested that experimental animal study design can be improved. It can be concluded that E. hirta displayed potential as a wound healing agent in vivo studies although further research on structure-activity relationship of compounds responsible for the wound healing effect and toxicological studies before it can proceed to clinical studies.
Currently, the search to identify treatments and vaccines for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are ongoing. Desperation within the community, especially among the middle-and low-income groups acutely affected by the economic impact of forced lockdowns, has driven increased interest in exploring alternative choices of medicinal plant-based therapeutics. This is evident with the rise in unsubstantiated efficacy claims of these interventions circulating on social media. Based on enquiries received, our team of researchers was given the chance to produce evidence summaries evaluating the potential of complementary interventions in COVID-19 management. Here, we present and discuss the findings of four selected medicinal plants (Nigella sativa, Vernonia amygdalina, Azadirachta indica, Eurycoma longifolia), with reported antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory effects that might be interesting for further investigation. Our findings showed that only A. indica reported positive antiviral evidence specific to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) based on preliminary in silico data while all four medicinal plants demonstrated differential anti-inflammatory or immunomodulatory effects. The definitive roles of these medicinal plants in cytokine storms and post-infection complications remains to be further investigated. Quality control and standardisation of medicinal plant-based products also needs to be emphasized. However, given the unprecedented challenges faced, ethnopharmacological research should be given a fair amount of consideration for contribution in this pandemic.
Apium graveolens is an indigenous plant in the family Apiaceae, or Umbelliferae, that contains many active compounds. It has been used traditionally to treat arthritic conditions, gout, and urinary infections. The authors conducted a scoping review to assess the quality of available evidence on the overall effects of celery when treating neurological disorders. A systematic search was performed using predetermined keywords in selected electronic databases. The 26 articles included upon screening consisted of 19 in vivo studies, 1 published clinical trial, 4 in vitro studies and 2 studies comprising both in vivo and in vitro methods. A. graveolens and its bioactive phytoconstituent, 3-n-butylphthalide (NBP), have demonstrated their effect on neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke-related neurological complications, depression, diabetes-related neurological complications, and epilepsy. The safety findings were minimal, showing that NBP is safe for up to 18 weeks at 15 mg/kg in animal studies, while there were adverse effects (7%) reported when consuming NBP for 24 weeks at 600 mg daily in human trials. In conclusion, the safety of A. graveolens extract and NBP can be further investigated clinically on different neurological disorders based on their potential role in different targeted pathways.
A combined polyherbal formulation containing tongkat ali (Eurycoma longifolia) and kacip fatimah (Labisia pumila) aqueous extracts was evaluated for its safety aspect. A repeated dose 28-day toxicity study using Wistar rats was conducted where the polyherbal formulation was administered at doses 125, 500 and 2000 mg/kg body weight to male and female treatment groups daily via oral gavage, with rats receiving only water as the control group. In-life parameters measured include monitoring of food and water consumption and clinical and functional observations. On day 29, blood was collected for haematological and biochemical analysis. The rats were necropsied and the organs were collected for histopathological examination. This study showed that the combined formulation did not induce any significant toxicity effect at any dose level in terms of morbidity, mortality, behaviour, functional observation, body weight, food and water consumption, whole blood haematology and serum biochemistry. However, there were some microscopic changes in the histopathological examinations of some organs given 2000 mg/kg body weight, which may suggest an early response to the polyherbal formulation. From this study, the no observed adverse effect level is estimated to be more than 500 mg/kg body weight but not exceeding 2000 mg/kg body weight. The observed effects at the highest dose indicate the need for further study of longer dosing duration.
Eurycoma longifolia is one of the commonly consumed herbal preparations and its major chemical compound, eurycomanone, has been described to have antimalarial, antipyretic, aphrodisiac, and cytotoxic activities. Today, the consumption of E. longifolia is popular through the incorporation of its extract in food items, most frequently in drinks such as tea and coffee. In the current study, the characterisation of the physicochemical and pharmacokinetic (PK) attributes of eurycomanone were conducted via a series of in vitro and in vivo studies in rats and mice. The solubility and chemical stability of eurycomanone under the conditions of the gastrointestinal tract environment were determined. The permeability of eurycomanone was investigated by determining its distribution coefficient in aqueous and organic environments and its permeability using the parallel artificial membrane permeability assay system and Caco-2 cultured cells. Eurycomanone's stability in plasma and its protein-binding ability were measured by using an equilibrium dialysis method. Its stability in liver microsomes across species (mice, rat, dog, monkey, and human) and rat liver hepatocytes was also investigated. Along with the PK evaluations of eurycomanone in mice and rats, the PK parameters for the Malaysian Standard (MS: 2409:201) standardised water extract of E. longifolia were also evaluated in rats. Both rodent models showed that eurycomanone in both the compound form and extract form had a half-life of 0.30 h. The differences in the bioavailability of eurycomanone in the compound form between the rats (11.8%) and mice (54.9%) suggests that the PK parameters cannot be directly extrapolated to humans. The results also suggest that eurycomanone is not readily absorbed across biological membranes. However, once absorbed, the compound is not easily metabolised (is stable), hence retaining its bioactive properties, which may be responsible for the various reported biological activities.