Exploring the Anti-Hypertensive Properties of Medicinal Plants and Their Bioactive Metabolites: An Extensive Review

Medicinal plants are extensively used in traditional folk medicine. High blood pressure is associated with the risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and many other serious health complications resulting from it as a major concern of morbidity and mortality in health sector. Use of diuretics, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, beta adrenergic receptor antagonists (beta blockers), alpha adrenergic receptor antagonists (alpha blockers), calcium channel blockers (CCBs) etc. are not efficient enough to cure hypertension. Side effects regarding these medications lead to intolerance, impaired control of the disease, and also mismanagement of therapy. So, approach regarding quenching new potent therapeutic compounds from medicinal plants draws attention nowadays. For example, as a first-line therapeutic agent, an alkaloid is highly effective in lowering systolic blood pressure which is isolated from root extract of the plant of Rauwolfia serpentina species, namely reserpine. This article comes up with a list of 63 plant species from 37 families, compiling information related to plant parts used for making extracts, types of extract and animals used in these studies, antihypertensive effect of the extracts etc. It also refers to 74 chemically defined molecules, with in vitro and in vivo anti-hypertensive potential, isolated from these extracts along with their dosage and mechanism of action by using electronic searches of published articles from various databases and reference books. Our present work would be beneficial for researchers to investigate and invent novel antihypertensive therapy to treat hypertension.