Abstract

Traditional medicine has been practiced in different parts of the world from time immemorial. Even now it is heavily relied on by native people. Moreover, a quarter of the allopathic medications are based on compounds isolated from natural products. With increase in drug recalls resulting from severe side-effects, the pharmaceutical industry also is interested in finding new drugs from natural sources with fewer or no side-effects. Recently, these traditional medicines are receiving more scientific support which helps in not only authenticating the use of these medicines for treatment but also understanding the mechanism of action of these drugs. We started with testing one species of Cissus,Cissus quadrangularis, for its bone protective properties and found that many species from this genus have been reported to have medicinal properties for treating various ailments. In this review, we have compiled all the information related to the medicinal use of the different species from this genus. We used Pubmed and OVID as our major source for the literature collection and also used cross-references from the papers.

Key words: Genus Cissus, medicinal properties, obesity, gastrointestinal tract, bone, diabetes, Cissus quadrangularis, Cissus sycoides.

Abbreviation

CQ, Cissus quadrangularis; MAPK, mitogen activated protein kinase; CS,Cissus sicyoides; IGF, Insulin-like growth factor; NF-kB, nuclear factor kappa B.