Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Jun;28(1):387-401.
doi: 10.1007/s40199-019-00319-7. Epub 2020 Feb 14.

The analgesic potential of glycosides derived from medicinal plants

Haroon Khan  1 , Aini Pervaiz  2 , Sebastiano Intagliata  3 , Niranjan Das  4   5 , Kalyan C Nagulapalli Venkata  6 , Atanas G Atanasov  7   8   9   10 , Agnieszka Najda  11 , Seyed Mohammad Nabavi  12 , Dongdong Wang  7   8 , Valeria Pittalà  3 , Anupam Bishayee  13
Affiliations
Review

The analgesic potential of glycosides derived from medicinal plants

Haroon Khan et al. Daru. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

Pain represents an unpleasant sensation linked to actual or potential tissue damage. In the early phase, the sensation of pain is caused due to direct stimulation of the sensory nerve fibers. On the other hand, the pain in the late phase is attributed to inflammatory mediators. Current medicines used to treat inflammation and pain are effective; however, they cause severe side effects, such as ulcer, anemia, osteoporosis, and endocrine disruption. Increased attention is recently being focused on the examination of the analgesic potential of phytoconstituents, such as glycosides of traditional medicinal plants, because they often have suitable biological activities with fewer side effects as compared to synthetic drugs. The purpose of this article is to review for the first time the current state of knowledge on the use of glycosides from medicinal plants to induce analgesia and anti-inflammatory effect. Various databases and search engines, including PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar, were used to search and collect relevant studies on glycosides with antinociceptive activities. The results led to the identification of several glycosides that exhibited marked inhibition of various pain mediators based on different well-established assays. Additionally, these glycosides were found to induce most of the analgesic effects through cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase pathways. These findings can be useful to identify new candidates which can be clinically developed as analgesics with better bioavailability and reduced side effects. Graphical abstract Analgesic mechanisms of plant glycosides.

Keywords: Analgesics; Anti-inflammatory agents; Glycosides; Medicinal plants; Natural products.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

Figures

Graphical abstract
Graphical abstract
Analgesic mechanisms of plant glycosides
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Analgesic mechanisms mediated by various plant glycosides
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Andersen LPH, Gogenur I, Fenger AQ, Petersen MC, Rosenberg J, Werner MU. Analgesic and antihyperalgesic effects of melatonin in a human inflammatory pain model: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, three-arm crossover study. Pain. 2015;156(11):2286–2294. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000284. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Adedapo AA, Sofidiya MO, Maphosa V, Moyo B, Masika PJ, Afolayan AJ. Anti-inflammatory and analgesic activities of the aqueous extract of Cussonia paniculata stem bark. Rec Nat Prod. 2008;2(2):46–53.
    1. Rosenberg NL, Lovejoy B. CHAPTER 11 - work-related low Back pain. In: Rosenberg NL, editor. Occupational and Environmental Neurology: Butterworth-Heinemann. 1995:279–308.
    1. Khan MA, Raza F, Khan IA. Pain: history. Culture and Philosophy Acta Med-Hist Adriat. 2015;13(1):113–130. - PubMed
    1. Afzal M, Gupta G, Kazmi I, Rahman M, Afzal O, Alam J et al. Anti-inflammatory and analgesic potential of a novel steroidal derivative from Bryophyllum pinnatum. Fitoterapia. 2012;83(5):853–8. doi:10.1016/j.fitote.2012.03.013. - PubMed