Neurobehavioral and neurochemical studies In Cerebral Ischemia and itsamelioration by herbal drugs

Abstract

The effort to develop effective therapies for acute ischemic stroke achieved several important successes during the past decade, but many disappointing failures also came through. Alternative therapeutic measures based on medicinal plants/herbs have also reported encouraging results. The plant products not only act synergistically with other compounds but also enhance the activity of other drugs/compounds or neutralize the toxicity of many chemicals. newlineThe plant products (Azadirachta seed extract, piperine, zingerone and capsaicin) used in this work, have been found to be effective against I/R injury at selected doses. Since each herbal compound/product has demonstrated its unique way of therapeutic intervention in rat MCAO model, the selected doses and the time-point at which the compounds were administered, are quite different, therefore it becomes difficult to make absolute comparison among them in order to predict more effective one. Prima facie, zingerone has been found to be more effective in terms of being good antioxidant and showing anti-apoptotic nature which mitigated I/R injury even when administered with delay of 3 h after MCAO. Capsaicin and piperine, although, has shown anti-ischemic and anti-inflammatory properties at the doses lower than that of zingerone, may not be regarded best medicines as they possess a narrow range of therapeutic index and higher doses of these may be detrimental to the brain cells. The only plant extract - Azadirachta seed extract used in this work seems to be most effective antioxidant but again it possesses lower ability of scavenging free radicals (DPPH).