A comprehensive review of the traditional plant based medicines for the treatment of rheumatism

Inflammation is a highly complex mechanism and can be described as the body's first defensive immune system reaction. The immediate purpose is to guard against infectious invasions, the introduction of antigens, any cell and tissue disruption or harm. If it is not treated, it is persistent which progresses to serious degenerative conditions such as rheumatism, atherosclerosis and asthma. Rheumatism is a category of inflammatory disease with chronic conditions. The disease includes a rise in the amount of neutrophils, lymphocytes and monocytes, which primarily influence the synovial fluid of the movable joints and eventually cause cartilage and bone degradation across the joints. Many steroidal and nonsteroidal drugs (Methotrexate, Cyclosporine and Dpencillamine, Ibuprofen, Sulindac, Indomethacin) are prescribed as treatment therapies. But, unfortunately, all these drugs are having side effects. So, to enhance the pharmacological effects and decrease the side-effects of the available treatment therapies, there is a need to move towards alternative therapies. By keeping the limitations of the existing therapies, in the present review, we tried to summarize the data of traditional medicinal plants with maximum pharmacological activities with less side effects for the rheumatism patients. A systematic literature and electronic archive analysis was performed using internet search engines such as Google scholar, Pubmed, Medlineplus, and Science Direct from numerous academic publications. This review paper is summarized with total 500 articles out of which 330 articles are selected to review for extracts and parts used, chemical constituents, traditional uses and for reporting anti rheumatic activity.