Solving the puzzle: what is behind our forefathers’ anti-inflammatory remedies?

Abstract

Inflammation is a ubiquitous host response in charge of restoring normal tissue structure and function but is a double-edged sword, as the uncontrolled or excessive process can lead to the injury of host cells, chronic inflammation, chronic diseases, and also neoplastic transformation. Throughout history, a wide range of species has been claimed to have anti-inflammatory effects worldwide. Among them, Angelica sinensis, Tropaeolum majus, Castilleja tenuiflora, Biophytum umbraculum, to name just a few, have attracted the scientific and general public attention in the last years. Efforts have been made to assess their relevance through a scientific method. However, inflammation is a complex interdependent process, and phytomedicines are complex mixtures of compounds with multiple mechanisms of biological actions, which restricts systematic explanation. For this purpose, the omics techniques could prove extremely useful. They provide tools for interpreting and integrating results from both the classical medical tradition and modern science. As a result, the concept of network pharmacology applied to phytomedicines emerged. All of this is a step toward personalized therapy.

A Reassessment of the Marrubium Vulgare L. Herb’s Potential Role in Diabetes Mellitus Type 2: First Results Guide the Investigation toward New Horizons

“…Despite this, as we previously stated [ 16 ], a characterized compound with a perfectly defined mechanism of action at a particular dose fulfills the negative requirements (such as toxicity) inherited from classical pharmacology. However, new trends suggest an integrative approach in which a wide variety of compounds act on multiple targets together to produce a final action through a balance resulting from minor changes (synergy); something different is not expected here.…”

Pharmacological Activities of Phytomedicines: A Challenge Horizon for Rational Knowledge

“…To sum up, it must be concluded that not only is the pattern of gene expression (signature in some texts) different depending on whether a substance or a mixture of substances (extract) is administered, presumably more complex in the last case, but also depending on the substance/extract concentration or the extract fraction administered. The development and refinement of "-omic" technologies, including genomics/transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, has led to advances in the assessment of both the efficacy and, no less important, safety of herbal medicines [29,30] referred to by some authors as "herbomics", although this term is still in its infancy. An interesting study is the one published by Wang et al [31], in which the possible toxicological role of Matricaria chamomilla was evaluated using metabolomics approaches.…”

Avaliação da atividade antitumoral, proliferativa, antimicrobiana e anti-inflamatória in vitro, de extratos etanólicos de diferentes espécies vegetais da Mata Atlântica brasileira

“…A inflamação é uma resposta de defesa à infecção ou lesão tecidual, onde o organismo reage para localizar, inativar e destruir o agente agressor além de potenciar a reparação tecidual (Kulkarni et al, 2016;Villanueva et al, 2017).…”