BACKGROUND Age is the leading risk factor for acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases. The Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the oldest known compendium of Chinese materia media, lists herbal medicines that were believed to exert neither fast acting pharmacological effects nor discernible toxicity, but to promote general health and longevity. In modern terms, these herbal medicines could be consider...

Over 80% of pregnant women in Western Uganda deliver at home with the assistance of mainly traditional birth attendants who use herbal remedies to complete the processes of child bearing in the rural communities. In Uganda, complications resulting from reproductive health related conditions such as maternal mortality and morbidity (20.4%) account for number one problem among the disease burden ...

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of most fatal cancers. In most patients it is resistant to chemotherapy. Ferula gummosa gum, Scutellaria lindbergii, Kelussia odoratissima, and Artemisia kopetdaghensis are herbs about which there are some cytotoxic activity reports. In this study, cytotoxic and apoptotic activity of these four extracts on RCC cell line (ACHN) were evaluated and compared (ACHN)...

Ayurveda an ancient Indian system of medicine claims to have remedy for disorders likes’ jaundice and liver cirrhosis, which is inadequate with present allopathy. The present study was conducted to find out the effectiveness of some herbal extracts mixture (HEM) against ethanol induced liver damage in experimental animal models. An attempt is made to prepare formulation with herbal extracts tha...

We used herbal extracts in this study to investigate the effects of blue-light-induced oxidative stress on subjects' attentive performance, which is also associated with work performance. We employed an attention network test (ANT) to measure the subjects' work performance indirectly and used herbal extracts to reduce ocular oxidative stress. Thirty-two subjects participated in either an experi...

BACKGROUND The present study ascertained the capacities of crude aqueous and ethanolic leaf extracts of Acanthus montanus (ACMO), Asystasia gangetica (ASGA), Emilia coccinea (EMCO), and Hibiscus rosasinensis (HIRO), as well as their combinatorial formulations to ameliorate hyperglycemia in Type I diabetic rats. MATERIALS AND METHODS Hyperglycemia was induced by single intraperitoneal injectio...

BACKGROUND HerboChip is an array of different fractions deriving from herbal extracts. This study aimed to identify effective components from Chinese medicine (CM) that interact with nerve growth factor (NGF) as a target using HerboChip. METHODS Fifty types of CM that are traditionally used as remedies for emotion imbalance were selected and extracted with 50 % ethanol. Biotinylated-NGF was h...

Most known interactions between herbal extracts and drugs involve the inhibition of drug-metabolizing enzymes, but little is yet known about the possible role of transporters in these interactions. In this study, we have examined the effects of herbal extracts used in dietary supplements on the function of organic anion-transporting polypeptide B (OATP-B; OATP2B1), which is expressed on human i...

Cis-platinum (II) diammine dichloride (CDDP) is a platinum-based anticancer agent, and is often used for chemotherapy for malignant tumors, albeit CDDP has serious side-effects, including xerostomia (dry mouth). Since patients with xerostomia have reduced quality of life, it is urgent and important to identify nontoxic and natural agents capable of reducing the adverse effect of chemotherapy on...

BACKGROUND Osteoporosis (OP) is one of the most serious diseases in the modern world, and OP patients frequently suffer from fragility fractures in the hip, spine and wrist, resulting in a limited quality of life. Although bisphosphonates (BPs) are the most effective class of anti-bone-resorptive drugs currently available and the most commonly prescribed for the clinical treatment of OP, they a...