European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

EVALUATION OF ANTIOXIDANT, ANTIMICROBIAL AND PHYTOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS

Dr. Harjot Pal Kaur

ABSTRACT

Plants have been known to be a reservoir of secondary metabolites which are being exploited as source of bioactive substance for various pharmacological purposes. Some plants have been used traditionally for centuries and modern scientific studies have shown the existence of good correlation between the traditional and folkloric application of some of these plants that further strengthen the search for pharmacologically active compounds from plants. Natural products discovered so far have played a vital role in improving the human health and have been the drugs of choice despite facing a tough competition from compounds derived from computational chemistry, due to their safety and efficacy. The most striking feature of natural products is their structural diversity that is still largely untapped. Despite the current preoccupation with synthetic chemistry as a vehicle to manufacture drugs, the contribution of plants to disease treatment and prevention is still enormous. Even at the dawn of 21st century, 11% of the 252 drugs considered as basic and essential by the WHO were exclusively of flowering plant origin. The plant-derived compounds have a long history of clinical use, better acceptance and patient tolerance. Till date, 35,000-70,000 plant species have been analysed for their medicinal use. Plants especially those with ethno-pharmacological uses have been the primary sources of medicine for early drug discovery. It is now believed that nature has given the cure of every disease in one way or another. Large amount of drugs such as antispasmodics, anticancer, antimicrobials etc. are developed from plants. A large number of the plants are claimed to possess the antibiotic properties in the traditional system and are also used extensively by the tribal people worldwide. Plants have been known to relieve various diseases in Ayurveda. Therefore, the researchers today are emphasizing on evaluation and characterization of various plants and plant constituents against a number of diseases based on their traditional claims of the plants given in Ayurveda (Tiwari et al., 2011).

Keywords: .