ABSTRACT:
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) leading to heart failure and heart attack are increasing alarmingly. Obviously discovery of the suitable medicines are the need of the hour. While some research work has already been done on the mgulation of CVDS using plant extracts, on active compounds nothing much is known. Our recent findings on plant extracts and their active compounds are being presented here. Several investigations were made on the crude extracts of some plants to unravel their efficacy to regulate chemically induced cardiovascular problems in the laboratory animals. Once the effectiveness of the crude extracts were ascertained, attempts were made to isolate different phytochemicals and to evaluate their possible cardio-protective efficacy. Tissue lipid peroxidation (LPO) and antioxidant status and some cardiac marker enzymes were considered as major indices. Two active compounds from T.f. gratium seeds and one each from M. oleifera leaf and C roseus leaf were found to be quite effective in the amelioration of isoproterenol (aSO-induced myocardial dysfunctions in rats. Most likely the efficacy of the compounds were due to their structural specificity and free radical scavenging action. The test compounds appeared to be safe at certain concentration as they did not enhance tissue LPO and enhanced the antioxidant status. Further research using these test phytochemicals will certainly help in the discovery of new drugs for the prevention and treatment of cardio vascular diseases.