Hyperlipidemia and associated risk factors: synthetic drugs or medicinal plants? An important question

Abstract

Hyperlipidemia is a major health issue in industrialized and developing countries that is associated with other complications like angina due to atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, strokes, heart attacks, peripheral arterial diseases, obesity, renal failure, liver dysfunction, Cushing’s syndrome and glycogen storage disease. Hyperlipidemia is being treated with different classes of synthetic drugs having different mechanisms of action and also differ significantly in the magnitude and type of lipid reduction. The poor efficacy and unwanted side effects of these synthetic drugs has created the need of finding new compounds for the treatment of hyperlipidemia. Herbal drugs are considered to possess minimum or no side effects as compared to synthetic compounds. Furthermore, there is an increasing demand from patients to have drugs from natural products. An increased interest in the research of traditional remedies has put medicinal plants in the mainstream. At present, many studies have their focus to find the plants having antihyperlipidemic activity which in turn, will be useful to reduce the risk of hyperlipidemia. Active ingredients of plants have huge potential to cope with the problem of hyperlipidemia with minimum side effects, thus there is huge demand of these plant based drugs. Herbal drugs can prove to be an excellent strategy for the treatment of hyperlipidemia. Many herbal medicines have already occupied their space as an alternative to synthetic drugs for the treatment of hyperlipidemia. The purpose of this review is to highlight the importance of hyperlipidemia and associated risk factors with their treatment regarding synthetic drugs. Special emphasis has been given to the potential of medicinal plants related to their efficacy against hyperlipidemia.