Medicinal Plants and Phytochemicals for the Treatment of Pulmonary Hypertension

Abstract

Background: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a progressive disease that is associated with pulmonary arteries remodeling, right ventricle hypertrophy, right ventricular failure and finally death. The present study aims to review the medicinal plants and phytochemicals used for PH treatment in the period of 1994-2019. Methods: PubMed, Cochrane and Scopus were searched based on pulmonary hypertension, plant and phytochemical keywords from August 23, 2019. All articles that matched the study based on title and abstract were collected, non-English, repetitive and review studies were excluded. Results: Finally 41 studies remained from a total of 1290. The results show that many chemical treatments considered to this disease are ineffective in the long period because they have a controlling role, not a therapeutic one. On the other hand, plants and phytochemicals could be more effective due to their action on many mechanisms that cause the progression of PH. Conclusion: Studies have shown that herbs and phytochemicals used to treat PH do their effects from six mechanisms. These mechanisms include antiproliferative, antioxidant, antivascular remodeling, anti-inflammatory, vasodilatory and apoptosis inducing actions. According to the present study, many of these medicinal plants and phytochemicals can have effects that are more therapeutic than chemical drugs if used appropriately.

Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Allicin Associated with Fibrosis in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

“…Several studies have reported that medicinal plants, nutraceuticals, and phytochemicals exert significant benefits for PAH [15]. These natural compounds have anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative, and anti-vascular remodeling properties [16].…”

Withania Somnifera: Correlation of Phytoconstituents with Hypolipidemic and Cardioprotective Activities

“…In addition, ISO promotes lipolysis in the myocardium (Jasemi et al, 2020, andIpseeta et al, 2004). Lipolysis results in the release of a large amount of free fatty acids and TAG.…”

“…Earlier references have shown that the plant preparations have anti-inflammatory (Boehm et al, 2000), anti-cancer, anti-stress, and immunomodulatory activities. WS has also shown reports of the central nervous system (CNS), endocrine (Subasini et al, 2007), and cardiovascular (Jasemi et al, 2020) diseases. Furthermore, WS preparations are thought to affect GABAergic (gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) (Dar et al, 2016) or cholinergic (Kumari et al, 2020) neurotransmission, which could be associated to a variety of CNS disorders.…”

Nutraceuticals in the Treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

“…Many medicinal plants and natural compounds have beneficial effects in the treatment of PAH [ 63 ]. Interestingly, these compounds do not have more side effects than chemical drugs [ 64 ]. In humans, the oral administration of quercetin did not show any adverse effects at doses up to 730 mg per day over one month [ 65 ].…”