A REVIEW OF MEDICINAL PLANTS AS ANALGESICS
Siva Sankaran and Christudas Sunil*
ABSTRACT
Pain is an unpleasant and emotional experience associated with tissue damage. Analgesics are the drugs used to relieve pain. Based on definition of international association of pain study, pain is an undesirable mental and emotional experience that is associated with possible or actual damage of tissue or is created in some periods of these types of pains. It is created by different reasons such as harmful heat, stretch, electrical flow, necrosis, inflammation, laceration and spasm. It is also caused by a wide variety of diseases, surgical interventions and trauma. Degenerative diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, as well as heart, asthma, cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases are also associated with inflammatory processes and pain. It is a complex experience in which cognitive, affective and behavioral features, representing psychological conditions are affected. In most cases, pain is secondary to other complications such as diabetic nephropathy. Pain medication is one of the most common complications managed by the medical practitioners. Recent studies have shown that 22% of primary care patients suffered from pain which persists for more than six months and in some cases the percentage rises to 50% which is related to significant impairment of social functioning and quality of life Classical analgesics of natural origin include opiates and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs but they are associated with side effects such as gastric lesions, hepatotoxicity, renaltoxicity, tolerance and dependence. So, there is a need to explore natural available alternative sources to NSAIDs and opiates. Secondary metabolites of plants such as steroids, flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids and glycosides have gained importance due to their diverse pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic, etc.
Keywords: Pain is an unpleasant rheumatica, renaltoxicity, terpenoids and glycosides etc.
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