Biochemical Changes due to Various Environmental Pollutants Affecting the Therapeutic Potentialities of Certain Medicinal Plants

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Medicinal herbs have been an essential part of human society since the civilization started. They are boon of nature to cure a number of ailments of human beings. Herbal medicines are a major component in all traditional medicine systems since all practitioners of Ayurveda, Homeopathic, Siddha and Unani systems of medicine regularly employ a large number of Indian medicinal plants as antibiotic agents. In the present study, various plant species were collected from solid waste polluted (SWP) region and were compared with those of the plants collected from agricultural region. The selected plant species were subjected to phytochemical analysis and further tested against human dermatophytic fungus Microsporum gypseum in order to analyze the clinical efficacy and changes in the therapeutic potentialities due to solid waste pollution affecting the medicinal value of these plants. The plants collected from the agricultural region seemed to be more fungicidal as compared to those of SWP and the maximum inhibition of 92.85% was observed due to the aqueous extract of Calotropis procera collected from the agricultural region. However, the minimum inhibition of 23.80% due to Nerium indicum was further being observed collected from SWP region. Thus the plants grown in SWP region showed the minimum inhibition due to exposure to various environmental pollutants which altered their therapeutic value and the antifungal nature of these medicinal plants.
Keywords: Medicinal plants, phytochemical analysis, antifungal activity, solid waste polluted regions