Isolation and Characterization of an Antiurolithiatic Compound from Strychnospotatorum L f

Abstract

Human race is constantly being challenged by many dreadful diseases and it is an uphill task to combat them in the present scenario. With the onset of the synthetic era, pharmaceutical industries are producing a lot of synthetic drugs, that help to alleviate the chronic diseases. With the passage of time, many problems associated with frequent use of synthetic drugs become prominent, like severe side effects and resistance of microbes against these drugs. On the other side, these drugs are expensive and a large population cannot afford these drugs. In recent times, research on medicinal plants has been intensified all over the world. The natural pharmaceuticals are receiving importance and popularity as safe, efficacious and cost effective medicines with benefits due to combination. Medicinal plants have a promising future because there are about half million plants around the world and most of their medical activities have not yet been investigated that could be decisive in the treatment of present or future studies (Hassan, 2012). newlineThere has been a growing interest in Ayurveda in the past few years. To initiate fruitful dialogues between Ayurveda and modern science, in-depth understandings of both the systems become an essential pre requisite. The Ayurvedic system of herbalism traces its roots to over five thousand years ago in the Himalayan Mountains of India. quotAyurvedaquot has been translated as quotthe knowledge of life,quot and as quotthe science of life . Potential sources of natural antioxidant have been searched in different types of plant materials such as vegetables, fruits, leaves, oilseeds, cereal crops, tree barks, roots, spices and herbs (Sultana et al, 2007). Phytochemicals, the compounds present in plants are valuable source of food and medicine. They are known to have various biological activities such as antimicrobial, antifungal, antioxidant etc. (Rai et al., 2013).