ABSTRACT
Urinary tract infection is one the commonest bacterial infection in clinical practice. The infection mostly occurs in the lower part of urinary tract i.e., urinary bladder and urethra in which women are commonly affected due to the anatomical variation in urethra. UTI are primarily caused by gram-negative bacteria, but gram-positive bacteria may also be involved. The most common pathogen is Escherichia coli with the frequency rate of 33%, followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae (11%), Staphylococcus aureus (22.2%), Pseudomonas sp. (7.4%). UTI is commonly represented with the symptoms related to cystitis and pyelonephritis such as dysuria (painful urination), increased frequency of urine, supra pubic discomfort and pain in flanks, etc. As per Siddha text, UTI can be correlated with the terms Muthira kiricharam which has other synonyms such as Neer surukku, Neer kadupu etc. Various herbs have been mentioned in Siddha literatures for the treatment of UTI. The main aim of this review is to summarize the scientific evidences supporting the medicinal herbs mentioned in Siddha text for the treatment of UTI.
ABSTRACT
Siddha is the traditional system of medicine in India which is practiced in southern part. This traditional system has many polyherbal and herbo-mineral formulation which is more effective but they lack standardization procedures. Standardization of a herbo- mineral formulation is essential to assess the quality, efficacy, purity and safety of the drug. The present paper deals with standardization of Padigalinga Chenduram, the Siddha formulation which is used for treating menorrhagia, diarrhoea, dysentry etc. In-house preparation and one marketed sample were subjected to standardization techniques like organoleptic study, physicochemical screening and heavy metal analysis. It was observed that both the samples differ in their organoleptic character, physicochemical analysis and heavy metal analysis like colour variance, percent weight loss on drying or moisture content was found to be less in market sample and total ash value was high as well. And the market sample was found to be better than the in-house sample in water-soluble and alcohol-soluble extractive values. The toxic heavy metals as per AAS is found in both formulations and the values are not matching with each other, and it may be due to the raw material collection time and geographical variation, etc. which can be further investigated for its pharmacological activity. More number of samples from different pharmas has to be studied to arrive at definite standard for manufacturing Padigalinga Chenduram. When a definite standard is arrived from future studies, Padigalinga Chenduram will be a cost effective Siddha formulation for the treatment of various ailments.