Respiratory disorders are a common cause of malady and demise in Pakistan due to its remoteness, cold and harsh climatic conditions as well as scarce health care facilities. The people rely upon the indigenous plant resources to cure various respiratory disorders. The primary objective of this review was to assemble all available ethno-medicinal data of plants used for respiratory disorders in Pakistan. Pharmacological activity of these plants (based upon published scientific research), distribution, diversity, use, preparation methods, economical value, conservation status and various available herbal products of some plants have also been explored. This study scrutinized various electronic databases for the literature on medicinal plants used in Pakistan to treat respiratory disorders. A total of 384 species belonging to 85 families used to treat respiratory disorders in Pakistan has been documented. Cough was the disorder treated by the highest number of species (214) followed by asthma (150), cold (57) and bronchitis (56). Most of the plants belongs to Asteraceae (32) and Solanaceae family (32) followed by moraceae (17), Poaceae (13), and Amaranthaceae (13) with their habit mostly of herb (219) followed by Shrub (112) and tree (69). Traditional healers in the region mostly prepare ethno medicinal recipes from leaves (24%) and roots (11%) in the form of decoction. Among the reported conservation status of 51 plant species, 5 were endangered, 1 critically endangered, 11 vulnerable, 14 rare, 16 least concern, 3 infrequent and 1 near threatened. We found only 53 plants on which pharmacological studies were conducted and 17 plants being used in herbal products available commercially for respiratory disorders. We showed the diversity and importance of medicinal plants used to treat respiratory disorders in the traditional health care system of Pakistan. As such disorders are still causing several deaths each year, it is of the utmost importance to conduct phytochemical and pharmacological studies on the most promising species. It is also crucial to increase access to traditional medicine, especially in rural areas. Threatened species need special attention for traditional herbal medicine to be exploited sustainably.

Ethno-pharmacological relevancePlants are providing reliable therapy since time immemorial. Pakistan has a great diversity in medicinal flora and people use these ethno-medicines to deal with many skin problems. This review explores the fundamental knowledge on various dermatological properties of medicinal plants of Pakistan and is aimed to provide a baseline for the discovery of new plants having activities against skin issues.Material and methodA total of 244 published articles were studied using different research engines like PubMed, Google, Google-scholar and science direct.ResultsReview of literature revealed ethno-pharmacological use of 545 plant species, belonging to 118 families and 355 genera, to combat various skin ailments. Out of these, ten most commonly used plant species belonging to ten different families are documented in this review. It was also found out that ehno-medicines are prepared using various parts of the plants including leaves (28.32%), whole plant and roots 13.17% and 10.97% respectively, in the form of powder (23.5%) and paste (22.75%). A total of 13 endangered plant species and ten commercially important plants were recorded.ConclusionMedicinal plants of Pakistan have therapeutic effects against several skin problems; however most of medicinal plants are still not evaluated scientifically to support their ethno-pharmacological claim on skin. Dermatological pathogens are recommended to study. Further, the conservational programs should be established for endangered species.

This study investigated the development of pragmatic competence of Pakistani ESL learners through classroom teaching. The quasi-experimental research design was employed. The sample was twenty-five undergraduate Pakistani ESL learners. The impact of teaching pragmatic competence and the retention effects of learning were investigated. The experimental process comprised of the intervention of teaching the American English Refusals to Pakistani ESL students. The Written Discourse Completion tests were used at three different stages for the evaluation purpose and data collection. The mix method was used for data analysis. The qualitative analysis of the responses was conducted by the performances of learners in four stimulus types of the refusals (invitations, suggestions, offers & requests) and four aspects of accuracies (correct expression, quality of information, strategies of choices & level of formality) in the pre-test, post-test and the delayed post-test (Hudson et al. 1992, 1995). The qualitative analysis helped to elaborate the further explanation of the quantitative data. The mean scores of the students in DCTs were the quantitative data. The comparison of post-test scores showed that the pragmatic competence of Pakistani English language learners could be developed through teaching. Furthermore, the study showed that the Pakistani ESL students could retain their pragmatic competence of learning English refusals after two months of academic instructions in classroom setting. This results and findings of the study supported rich implications for the future researchers in interlanguage pragmatics and further it carried pedagogical implications related to ESL learning, teaching and course designing.