Abstract:This article presents highlights of the published literature regarding the anti-inflammatory activities of natural products. Many review articles were published in this regard, however, most of them have presented this important issue from a regional, limited perspective. This paper summarizes the vast range of review and research articles that have reported on the anti-inflammatory effects of extracts and/or pure compounds derived from natural products. Moreover, this review pinpoints some interesting traditionally used medicinal plants that were not investigated yet.

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Carob is one of the major food trees for peoples of the Mediterranean basin, but it has also been traditionally used for medicinal purposes. Carob contains many nutrients and active natural products, and D-Pinitol is clearly one of the most important of these. D-Pinitol has been reported in dozens of scientific publications and its very diverse medicinal properties are still being studied. Presently, more than thirty medicinal activities of D-Pinitol have been reported. Among these, many publications have reported the strong activities of D-Pinitol as a natural antidiabetic and insulin regulator, but also as an active anti-Alzheimer, anticancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory, and is also immune- and hepato-protective. In this review, we will present a brief introduction of the nutritional and medicinal importance of Carob, both traditionally and as found by modern research. In the introduction, we will present Carob’s major active natural products. The structures of inositols will be presented with a brief literature summary of their medicinal activities, with special attention to those inositols in Carob, as well as D-Pinitol’s chemical structure and its medicinal and other properties. D-Pinitol antidiabetic and insulin regulation activities will be extensively presented, including its proposed mechanism of action. Finally, a discussion followed by the conclusions and future vision will summarize this article.

Three different extracts (aqueous, ethanolic and ethyl acetate) of Carthamus tenuis and Cephalaria jopprnsis were prepared and tested for total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant capacity and antifungal activity. Results for C. tenuis are meaningfully different of known findings. As for C. joppensis, the medicinal and biological properties of this plant were never published before. For each plant, TPC was highest in aqueous extracts and these had highest antioxidant capacity. Ethanolic extracts of both plants had strongest activity against Rhizopus stolonifer (black mold).

Prosopis farcta is a widespread weed in the Near East and its an invasive plant of southwestern parts of the USA. Despite being sufficiently studied in the past, some of its activities were not published. In this research, we studied the antifungal and anti-termite activities of four extracts of the plant aerial parts: aqueous, ethanolic, ethyl acetate and hexane. In addition, since the published reports of total phenolic content (TPC) are not consistent, we tested this as well. We also tested the potential of the aqueous extract of Carya illinoinensis as possible weed biocontrol against P. farcta. The n-Hexane extract had the highest antifungal and anti-termite activities. TPC was found around 13.9 mg of gallic acid equivalent for 1 g of dry ethanolic extract (highest). The attempts to use an aqueous extract of C. illinoinensis for weed biocontrol of P. farcta achieved very limited success

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