With an increase in the ageing population worldwide, the prevalence of osteoporosis increases at an alarming rate in both male and female irrespective of their ethnicity. At present, the currently available therapeutic options are mostly limited to either bone resorptive or bone forming efficacies and both approaches are associated with serious side effects. Despite these options, there is still need for newer therapeutics to treat osteoporosis, which can offer beneficial effects for maintaining balanced dynamics between bone formation and bone resorption, devoid of any side effect. The proper understanding of pathophysiology of the disease is essential for designing or investigating an effective and safe anti-osteoporotic agent. This review represents a discussion around the molecular targets with their implications in disease progression, available therapeutic options, the emerging targets, and the importance of designing an effective anti-osteoporotic agent.

An Ayurvedic polyherbal extract (PHE) comprising six herbs viz. Berberis aristata, Cyperus rotundus, Cedrus deodara, Emblica officinalis, Terminalia chebula and Terminalia bellirica is mentioned as an effective anti-hyperglycemic agent in 'Charaka Samhita', the classical text of Ayurveda. Previously, antidiabetic drug metformin was found to elicit antiaging effects and PHE was also found to exhibit antidiabetic effects in humans. Therefore, we screened it for its in vivo antioxidant antiaging effect on stress and lifespan using human homologous Caenorhabditis elegans model system. The effect on aging is evaluated by studying effect of PHE on mean survival in worms. The stress modulatory potential was assessed by quantification of intracellular ROS level, autofluorescent age pigment lipofuscin, oxidative and thermal stress assays. Additionally, stress response was quantified using gene reporter assays. The 0.01 µg/ml dose of PHE was able to enhance mean lifespan by 16.09% (P < 0.0001) in C. elegans. Furthermore, PHE treated worms demonstrated oxidative stress resistance in both wild type and stress hypersensitive mev-1 mutant along with upregulation of stress response genes sod-3 and gst-4. The delayed aging under stress can be attributed to its direct reactive oxygen species-scavenging activity and regulation of some age associated genes like daf-2, daf-16, skn-1, sod-3 and gst-4 in wild-type worms. Additonally, PHE delayed age related paralysis phenotype in CL4176 transgenic worms. Altogether, our results suggest PHE significantly improves the oxidative stress and life span in C. elegans. Overall the present study suggests this polyherbal formulation might play important role in regultaing aging and related complications like diabetes.

-Chemical characterization and acute and sub-acute toxicity study of Trikatu, a generic herbal formulation of Indian system of medicine, was carried out in Charles Foster (CF) rats for safety by the experimental animals (both male and female) and no changes were observed in mortality, morbidity, gross pathology, gain in weight, vital organ weight, hematological (total white blood cells (WBC) and red blood cells (RBC) count), biochemical parameters such as serum creatinine, serum glutamate oxaloa--sue biochemical parameters such as reduced glutathione and malonaldehyde content as oxidative stress markers. In sub-acute experiment, Trikatu was administered at 5, 50 and 300 mg/kg body weight once -300 mg/kg body weight, increase in SGPT activity at 50 mg/kg body weight and decrease in WBC count at 300 mg/kg body weight on 28 th day post treatment.

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