Abstract
Bamboo plants play a significant role in traditional Asian medicine, especially in China and Japan. Biomedical investigations on the health-benefiting effects as well as toxicity of different parts and species of bamboo have been carried out worldwide since the 1960s. This review summarizes the current scientific findings on the biological effects of bamboo-based products, and contrasts these findings with the ethnopharmacological records. In traditional Chinese medicine, bamboo is generally considered as cooling, calming, and phlegm resolving agent. Modern scientific studies have a wide range of protective effects of bamboo-derived products has been documented, such as protection against oxidative stress, inflammation, lipotoxicity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Some of these products may interfere with male and female reproductive function, thyroid hormone metabolism, and hepatic xenobiotrans formation enzymes. The diversity of bamboo species, parts of the plants available for medicinal use, and different extraction methods suggest that bamboo has great potential for producing a range of extracts with functional utility in medicine. Although some of the biomedical research was inspired by the traditional use of bamboo, the wealth of ethnopharmacological records on varied bamboo products is yet to be fully explored.
Key words: Bamboo, traditional medicine, natural product, antioxidant, inflammation, cancer, lipotoxicity, cardiovascular disease, toxicity, reproduction, thyroid hormone, phase I and phase II hepatic enzymes.
