“…The whole plants of P. harmala have also been used as folk medicine in Turkey and Iran (Hemmateenejad et al, 2006;Kartal et al, 2003). Pharmacological studies on extracts and alkaloids separated from P. harmala have shown some biological activity and pharmacological effects, such as anti-tumor and analgesic effects Sobhani et al, 2002;Farouk (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI 10.1002/bmc.3218 et al, 2008, vasorelaxant activities (Astulla et al, 2008), antimicrobial and antifungal activities (Darabpour et al, 2011;Sarpeleh et al, 2009;Arshad et al, 2008), hypoglycemic effects (Singh et al, 2008), antidepressant effects (Farzin and Mansouri, 2006), hallucinogenic effects (Glennon et al, 2000), antileishmanial, insecticidal and repellent activities (Mohammad and Mazen, 2009) and promoting wound healing (Derakhshanfar et al, 2010), and were strong inhibitors of monoamine oxidase (Herraiz et al, 2010;Schwarz et al, 2003) and cholinesterase (Zheng et al, 2009(Zheng et al, , 2011Zhao et al, 2013). However, the seeds and aerial parts of P. nigellastrum and P. multisectum were sometimes used as substitutes of P. harmala in medicinal markets, which might result in inconsistencies in the clinical efficacy and therefore create a potential health hazard.…”