Phytochemistry of pharmacologically important medicinal plants – A Review

Plant derived substances have recently become of great interest owing to their versatile applications.Medicinal plants are the richest bioresource of drugs of traditional systems of medicine, modern medicines, nutraceuticals, food supplements, folk medicines, pharmaceutical intermediates and chemical entities for synthetic drugs.The beneficial medicinal effects of plant materials typically result from the combinations of secondary products present in the plant.The medicinal actions of plants are unique to particular plant species or groups are consistent with this concept as the combinations of secondary products in a particular plant are often taxonomically distinct.Ecological function of secondary products may have some bearing on potential medicinal effects for humans and the secondary products involved in plant defense through cytotoxicity toward microbial pathogens could prove useful as antimicrobial medicines in humans, if not too toxic.In contrast to synthetic pharmaceuticals based upon single chemicals, many phytomedicines exert their beneficial effects through the additive or synergistic action of several chemical compounds acting at single or multiple target sites associated with a physiological process.The present review is focused on phytochemistry and pharmacological importance of medicinal plants.