Abstract

Sarita Das61090*, Biswa Mohan Sahoo61091 and Subrat Kumar Bhattamisra61092

The spreading Hogweed or Boerhaavia diffusa L. (BD) is a potent herbal medicine with diverse pharmacological activities. In Asia and Africa, it is used in different Ayurvedic medicines as a rejuvenator or “Rasayan” for its excellent antiaging and antioxidant properties. This review is intended to provide an extensive study on different phytochemicals present in BD and their relevant pharmacological activities to support its ethno medicinal uses. Further, this may help in exploring the undiscovered active constituents of BD, responsible for its diverse pharmacological uses. The data from different published research and review arti cles, confined to phytochemistry and pharmacological activities of different parts of BD, were extracted by using specific keywords from different scientific databases like Google, Science Direct, PubMed, etc. The whole plant (root, stem, leaf, flower and fruits) is rich in different bioactive phytocompounds. Till date, many of them were isolated from the roots and other parts of BD, but the most important secondary metabolites are phenolics, rotenoids, flavonoids, isoflavonoids, alkaloids, steroids, anthracenes and lignans. The crude extracts and the purified compounds were reported to have promising activities like antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antidiabetic, hepatoprotective, renoprotective, cardio protective, antifertility etc. As the reports on molecular mechanisms of specific interaction between isolated compounds and microbial effector proteins/toxins or their interference with molecular pathogenesis are limited, further investigation can be carried out to understand the prophylactic and therapeutic role of these phytomolecules in different diseases at a molecular level using appropriate experimental models.