A REVIEW ON TRADITIONAL PLANTS AND HERBS USED FOR HEPATOPROTECTIVE ACTIVITY

Abstract

India is known as a “Botanical garden of the world” because of largest producer of medicinal plants. These medicinal plants along with natural therapeutic value against various diseases, provide high quality food and raw materials. Considerably work has been done on medicinal plants to treatment of liver diseases, some of the plant products have been marketed as hepatoprotective drugs, based on their traditional uses and scientific reports. As liver is consider as vital organ, functions as a center of metabolism of nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins and lipids and excretion of waste metabolites. Liver cell injury is due to various toxicants such as carbon tetrachloride, thioactamide, chemotherapeutic agents etc, and chronic alcohol consumption and microbes is well studied and reported. The available synthetic drugs to treat liver disorders in this condition also cause further damage to the liver. Hence, Herbal drugs have become increasingly popular and their use is wide-spread. Herbal medicines have been used in the treatment of  liver diseases for a long time. Herbal drugs gained popularity and importance in past years because of their efficacy , safety and cost effectiveness