In-vitro evaluation of selected Egyptian traditional herbal medicines for treatment of alzheimer disease

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Ahmed A Hussein¹  Ibrahim A El-Garf²  Shereen K Ali³  Ahmed R Hamed⁴  Maha M Soltan⁴  Usama M Hegazy⁵  Esameldin E Elgorashi⁶ 

[1] Chemistry Department, University of Western Cape, Private Bag X17, 7535, Belleville, South Africa;Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, El-Giza, Egypt;Department of Phytochemistry, National Research Centre, 13211, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt;Department of Phytochemistry, National Research Centre, 13211, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt;Pharmaceutical Research Group, Centre of Excellence for Advanced Sciences, National Research Centre, 13211, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt;Molecular Biology Department, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Division, National Research Centre, 13211, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt;Phytomedicine Programme, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, 0110, Onderstepoort, Pretoria, South Africa;

关键词: Egyptian herbal medicine;    Unani medicine;    Alzheimer’s disease;    Anti-acetylcholinesterase;    Anti-inflammatory;    Anti-oxidant;    Adhatoda vasica;    Ferula assafoetida;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-13-121

 received in 2013-01-03, accepted in 2013-05-20,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEgyptians 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 treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (or to strengthen memory).MethodsIn this study, some of these plants were evaluated against three different preliminary bioassays related to AD to explore the possible way of their bio-interaction. Twenty three selected plants were extracted with methanol and screened in vitro against acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and cycloxygenase-1 (COX-1) enzymes. In addition, anti-oxidant activity using DPPH was determined.ResultsOf the tested plant extracts; Adhatoda vasica and Peganum harmala showed inhibitory effect on AChE at IC50 294 μg/ml and 68 μg/ml respectively. Moreover, A. vasica interacted reversibly with the enzyme while P. harmala showed irreversible inhibition. Ferula assafoetida (IC50 3.2 μg/ml), Syzygium aromaticum (34.9 μg/ml) and Zingiber officinalis (33.6 μg/ml) showed activity against COX-1 enzyme. Potent radical scavenging activity was demonstrated by three plant extracts Terminalia chebula (EC50 2.2 μg/ml), T. arjuna (3.1 μg/ml) and Emblica officinalis (6.3 μg/ml).ConclusionInterestingly, differential results have been obtained which indicate the variability of the mode of actions for the selected plants. Additionally, the reversible interaction of A. vasica against AChE and the potent activity of F. assafoetida against COX-1 make them effective, new and promising agents for treatment of AD in the future, either as total extracts or their single bioactive constituents.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ali et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.