CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF STUDY
The inflammation term is taken from the Latin word “inflammare” (to burn) (de oliveira). Inflammation is one of the most central processes required in defense of animal cells against certain injuries or microbial infections [Isailovicet al., 2015;Todd et al., 2015]. Nevertheless, inflammation regularly progresses to acute or chronic [Serhanet al., 2015]. Chronic inflammation is caused due to a variety of diseases including neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Inflammation is a local response of living mammalian tissues to injury. It is a body defense reaction in order to eliminate or limit the spread of injurious agents. There are various components to an inflammatory reaction injury. Edema formation, leukocyte infiltration and granuloma formation represent such components of inflammation (Mitchell and Cotron, 2010).Mechanism of inflammation represents a chain of organized, dynamic responses including both cellular and vascular events with specific humoral secretions. A group of secreted mediators and other signaling molecules (e.g., histamine, prostaglandins, leukotrienes, oxygen- and nitrogen-derived free radicals, and serotonin) are released by immune defense cells principally in the mechanism which can contribute in the event of inflammation [Anwikaret al., 2010]. Traditional and folklore medicines play an important role in healthcare. There exist a plethora of knowledge and benefits of herbal drugs in our ancient literature of ayurvedic and unani medicine. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80% of the population in developed countries relies on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare. Despite considerable progress in therapies using expensive synthetic drugs, the search for herbal remedies is growing which can be accounted for the effectiveness, minimal side effects in clinical experience, and relatively low cost of the herbal drugs. Herbal drugs or their extracts are prescribed widely, even when their biologically active compounds are unknown. Exploration of the chemical constituents of plants and pharmacological screening would provide the basis for developing new lead molecules in strategic favor of Natural product Drug discovery. This shows the need for planned activity guided pharmacological evaluation of herbal drugs [Kumar et al., 2013]. Medicinal plants constitute an effective source of both traditional and modern medicine. Plants have been used as sources of remedies for the treatment of many diseases since ancient times and people of all continents especially Africa have this old tradition.A plant is said to be medicinal when one or more of its parts have been claimed or used to cure disorders or ailments. Despite the remarkable progress in synthetic organic medicinal products of the twentieth century, over 25% of prescribed medicines in industrialized countries are derived directly or indirectly from plants (Newman et al., 2000). However, plants used in traditional medicine are still understudied (Kirby, 1996). In developing countries, notably in West Africa, new drugs are not often affordable. Thus, up to 80% of the population uses medicinal plants as remedies (Kirby, 1996; Hostellmann and Marston, 2002). In Africa, traditional healers and remedies made from plants play an important role in the health of millions of people. The current idea on inflammation has grown significantly over the years because of the huge elaboration of the field in more oblique directions. As a result, we are currently far from being able to fully apprehend the aftermath of inflammation in human health and diseases. Inflammation for years has been the sources and causes of different kinds of disease such as arthritis, heart attacks, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, asthma etc. Although, therapeutic drugs have been used to treat acute inflammation these drugs have been discovered to cause severe side effects which may lead to death.
