Background and Objective: Peganum harmala is a medicinal plant that has been used for treatment of numerous diseases including viral, bacterial and parasitic infections. Anti-proliferative and anti-tumor effects of Peganum harmala extracts and its derivatives have been reported. In the present study, cytotoxic effect of Peganum harmala seeds aquaous extract on leukemic U937 and Molt-4 cells was...

Parkinson’s disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders.  There are many documents about the effects of oxidative stress in Parkinson’s disease etiology. Angiotensin II activates NADPH dependent oxidases and causes superoxides formation.  Peganum harmala L. extract, which has angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory effect, is considered to evaluate oxidative stress inhi...

Objective Influenza A virus infections are still a major health problem and the choices available for the control and treatment of the disease are limited. This research evaluated in vitro and in vivo antiviral effects of Peganum harmala L. seeds (PHS) extract against influenza A virus. Materials and Methods In this research, in vitro anti-influenza A virus activity of the extract was assesse...

BACKGROUND Egyptians recognized the healing power of herbs and used them in their medicinal formulations. Nowadays, "Attarin" drug shops and the public use mainly the Unani medicinal system for treatment of their health problems including improvement of memory and old age related diseases. Numerous medicinal plants have been described in old literature of Arabic traditional medicine for treatme...

Objective: The present study was conducted to investigate antibacterial properties of fruit and flower of Peganum harmala. Material and Methods: Column chromatography, followed by preparative thin layer chromatography (TLC) was used for final purification. The structure of pure alkaloids was determined using spectroscopic methods (1H-N...

Harmala alkaloids are endogenous substances, which are involved in neurodegenerative disorders such as M. Parkinson, but some of them also have neuroprotective effects in the nervous system. While several sites of action at the cellular level (e.g. benzodiazepine receptors, 5-HT and GABA(A) receptors) have been identified, there is no report on how harmala alkaloids interact with voltage-gated ...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Biotransformation offers chemo enzymatic system to modify the compounds into their novel analogues which are difficult to synthesize by chemical methods. This paper describes the biotransformational studies of ambrox, one of the most important components of natural Ambergris (wale sperm) with fungal and plant cell culture. RESULTS Biotransformation of (-)-ambrox (1) w...