Antispasmodic Potential of Medicinal Plants: A Comprehensive Review.

Numerous medicinal plants have been utilized for the treatment of different types of diseases and disorders including gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. GI diseases are the most common complaints that normally affects the largest proportion of children and adolescents with overlapping clinical manifestation in diagnosis and medical needs. Drugs with antispasmodic effects are normally applied for the symptomatic treatment of contraction and cramping of smooth muscles in gastrointestinal diseases as well as in other critical clinical situations. In alternative system of medicines, the antispasmodic herbs played a significant role in the cure of GI diseases. These medicinal plants and their herbal products are used from generation to generation because of multiple nutritional and therapeutic benefits. The multiple uses might be attributed to the presence on biologically active chemical constitutes. The main aim of this review is to focus on the medicinal potential of plants possessing antispasmodic activities with their proposed mechanism of action. Several databases such as Google Scholar, Cochrane database, Scopus, and PubMed were used to search the relevant literature regarding "plants with antispasmodic activities." This present study highlights the updated and quantified information on several medicinal plants with antispasmodic activity like Zanthoxylum armatum, Matricaria chamomilla, Foeniculum vulgare, Pycnocycla spinosa, Atropa belladonna, Lavandula angustifolia, Mentha pulegium, Glycyrrhiza ularensis, Anethum graveolens, and Origanum majorana. Moreover, recent studies on other medicinal plant species also have been included in this review article. Additionally, the study also revealed that the active compounds of all these plants possess significant spasmolytic effect which is safest, efficacious, and cost effective as compared to the available synthetic drugs.

Therapeutic potential of medicinal plants for the management of scabies.

Sarcoptes scabiei (S. scabiei), a parasite mite which causes scabies disease resulting in serious public health concern. The long-term scabies disease can lead to complications such as septicemia, acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis, heart disease, and secondary infections. Timely treatment to the affected patients is required to control the disease and get rid of the causative agent. Delayed diagnosis and inappropriate treatment can lead to serious consequences. The most common treatment strategy is the use of allopathic medicines which can immediately relieve the patient but have the drawback of side effects. The safe and cost-effective alternative treatment strategy is the use of medicinal plants which have beneficial therapeutic potential against variety of diseases due to the presence of many bioactive phytoconstituents with no or minimal side effects. For the present review, the published articles describing scabies disease and its phytotherapeutic modalities were searched through different data bases including Google Scholar, PubMed, Medline, and ScienceDirect using the keywords like S. scabiei, prevalence of scabies disease, and phytotherapy of scabies. A large number of medicinal plants, such as Melaleuca alternifolia, Curcuma longa, Azadirachta indica, Rosmarinus officinalis, Capsicum annuum, Cinnamomum camphor, Solanum nigrum, and Eupatorium perfoliatum, have been reviewed for the promising future treatments of scabies. All the studied plants have many bioactive compounds with potential therapeutic effects against scabies and can be utilized for therapeutic purposes for this disease. This literature study has limitations because of the lack of sufficient data due to limited pre-clinical trials in this particular area. This review provides a baseline to explore the therapeutic potential of these medicinal plants against skin diseases. However, extensive studies are required to identify, authenticate, and characterize the bioactive compounds present in these plants which may lead to value addition in pharmaceutical industries providing the cost-effective way of treatment with minimal side effects.