ISSN: 2576-4772
Authors: Alex Boye
Mostly a common argument is made against use of plant - based alternative and complementary medicine such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that their use is based on empiricism, which is considered by adherents of conventional medicine to be unscientific and anti intellectual. It is in this light that the onus now is on natural product scientists to prove the superiority of plant-based medicines as epitomized by TCM through expanding knowledge on the superiority of medicinal plants as the mainstay of human pharmacopoeia. Major scientific databases including but not limited to Scopus, PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, Web of Science Core Collections, Google Scholar, Science Direct etc were critically searched by using a combination of terms. Precisely, Salvia miltiorrhiza and Astragalus membranaceus were searched from the various databases in combination with chemical composition, isolated compounds, medicinal uses, bioactivity, ethnopharmacology, chemical elucidation using the Boolean operators. It was observed that the two medicinal plants are phytochemically rich with diverse phytocompounds. Most of the phytocompounds isolated from the two medicinal plants were structurally elucidated together with their key biological properties. Most of the compounds from the two medicinal had their anti-cancer properties demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. Herewith, this review highlighted the centrality of Astragalus membranaceus and Salvia miltiorrhizha as key sources of bioactive compounds with demonstrable anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties.
Keywords: Astragalus Membranaceus; Bioactivity; Chinese Herbal Medicine; Danshen; Huan Qi; Salvia Miltiorrhiza
