Ethnomedicinal, Phytochemical, and Pharmacological Review of Asclepiadaceae

Asclepiadaceae plant family is among the dominant families, in which plants with medicinal potentials are domiciled. Plants in this family with medicinal claims are widely distributed across the globe. These plants are major components of different forms of traditional medicine globally. They are employed traditionally for the treatment/management of various ailments including pain, skin diseases, worms, hemorrhoids, bronchitis, asthma, leprosy, diabetes, vertigo, and several other ailments. Different phytochemical studies have been carried out on medicinal plants in this family with an important bioactive compound identified in them and isolated, these include giganteol, calotropeol, and β-amyrin from Calotropis gigantea; β-sitosterol and taraxasterol from Calotropis procera; gymnemic acids and Gymnema saponins from Gymnema sylvestre; tylophorine, kaempferol, and stigmasterol from Tylophora indica; and other important bioactive principles. Several pharmacological studies have also been carried out on them which have justified a lot of the ethnomedicinal applications while new possible applications have as well been revealed and proposed from these studies, this makes the plant family a potential source for developing new conventional drugs in the near future. However, due to the fact that the findings from these studies were reported separately most of which are not available on the same platforms, it has become quite difficult to holistically ascertain the scientifically proven therapeutic potentials of this plant family. Hence, the need to chronicle the different scientific findings on the medicinal plants from this plant family in a concise solitary form. This review, therefore, aims at documenting classical information on the phytochemistry, pharmacology, and therapeutic applications of medicinal plants belonging to Asclepiadaceae family. The species reviewed are the predominantly used medicinal plants from the Asclepiadaceae family in traditional medicine and are also the most extensively researched for their therapeutic potential in conventional health-care practice.