Abstract

MEDICINAL PLANTS HAVING ANTI-CHOLINESTERASE ACTIVITY FROM DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THE WORLD

Himanshi Choudhary and Suresh Kumar*

Abstract

Cholinesterase inhibition has been one the main strategy to provide symptomatic relief to Alzheimer’s patients based on cholinergic hypothesis. The main problems associated with currently used cholinesterase inhibitors are their associated side effects such as hepatotoxity nausea, vomiting and many more. In view of this, many researchers across the world are looking for safer, cheaper and readily bioavailable cholinesterase inhibitors. Plants are considered as one of the major source of cholinesterase inhibitors. Many plants have given new leads in deriving novel molecules that can be used as cholinesterase inhibitors in last few years. However, more such studies are required to explore the cholinesterase inhibitors from unexplored plant sources. This paper deals with recently explored plants along with their bioactive constituents that might be used for the symptomatic relief and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease from different regions of the world. Plants are selected mainly on the basis of traditional knowledge. Plants from various folk medicinal systems such as from Chinese, Egyptian, Unani, and Ayurvedas are used to explore cholinesterase inhibitors. The papers have been reviewed from different databases such as Pubmed and Google scholar.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Anti-cholinesterase, folk medicines.