Gout Remedies in Traditional Iranian Medicine (TIM)

Abstract

Practice and study of medicine in Iran has a long and prolific history. Iran has all characteristics of an indigenous culture which has so far discovered numerous natural products. Unfortunately, scant research has been conducted on this system of medicine and ethnopharmacology of Iran. Gout is a historical disease that is still widespread all around the world. As numerous remedies used to be administered for treating gout in TIM, we decided to investigate drugs used to target gout. To accomplish this, five of most important references of TIM form the 9th to the 18th century were investigated for gout remedies. For all herbal remedies, an extensive search of the scientific data banks, Medline and Scopus, was done to find recent possible results concerning the xanthine oxidase inhibitory, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic activities. One hundred and nine plant species, 31 animals, 14 minerals, and one mushroom were identified. Fourteen, twenty eight and three plant species have shown in vitro xanthine oxidase inhibitory, anti inflammatory and analgesic activities, respectively; also nine, forty and twenty two in vivo activities and two, seventeen and eight human studies were carried out for these three properties. Fifty-four drugs were cited in at least three references. TIM has the potential to be a very rewarding source of medical and medicinal knowledge. Then, a special focus should be put on drugs as well as the therapeutic method targeting the gout treatment. Owing to the limited attention so far paid to treating gout in TIM, it seems pertinent to conduct a systematic research on remedies which were used in TIM.