Ancient-Modern Concordance in Ayurvedic Plants: Some Examples

Medicinal plant wealth of local communities in some villages in Shimoga District of Karnataka, India

“…(Burseraceae) has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lipid disorders in addition to other diseases. It has been shown that two antihyperlipoproteinemic compounds, Z-guggulsterone and E-guggulsterone extracted from the gum resin, have hypolipidemic activity similar to that of the synthetic drug, clofibrate (Dev, 1999). The presence of resveratrol and pterostilbene in darakchasava, an ayurvedic medicine whose principal component being grapes, has been shown to reduce cardiac disease rate and carcinogenesis (Paul et al, 1999).…”

“…Rao (2000) provides a list of herbs that have various medicinal properties in his book on database of medicinal plants. Certain herbal drugs listed in the ayurveda and other traditional medicine systems are not only time-tested but have also been screened for their pharmacological properties (Dev, 1997(Dev, , 1999. For example, guggul, the gum resin from Commiphora wightti Engl.…”

Guggulsterone production in cell suspension cultures of the guggul tree, Commiphora wightii, grown in shake-flasks and bioreactors

“…Bhandari (syn. C. mukul) (Dev 1999;Wang et al 2004). Over-exploitation and slow growth of the tree, which is associated with poor seed set, make this plant an endangered species (Kumar and Shankar 1982;Kumar et al 2003).…”

Morphactin influences guggulsterone production in callus cultures of Commiphora wightii

“…Bhandari (syn. C. mukul) (Dev 1999;Wang et al 2004). They are effective antagonists of the bile acid receptor (Wu et al 2002), Farnesoid X receptor (Urizar et al 2002) and a ligand-dependent transcription factor that regulates the expression of CYP 7A1 gene involved in maintaining the cholesterol/bile acid homoeostasis through bile salt export pump (Owsley and Chiang 2003).…”