Neurodegeneration and Regeneration

The various neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are mostly ultimately fatal, with drug interventions failing to halt or reverse disease progression.

There is a search for more effective drugs, and there is growing evidence that plants may provide such a source. Our research has found that:

There are over 2000 plant species with a reported ethnomedical use of therapeutic potential for neurodegenerative diseases.
  • Bioactivities validate these reports for numerous pathologies implicated in neurodegeneration, ranging from protein misfolding, impaired autophagy and neurogenesis, neuroinflammation and vascular dysfunction.
  • Many of these plants demonstrate multiple activities that can be targeted to the multiple pathologies implicated in neurodegeneration. Such plants include:

    • grapes elderberry ginger rosemary
    Vitis vinifera [grape] Sambucus nigra [elderberry] Zingiber officinale [ginger] Rosmarinus officinalis [Rosemary]
    • These findings are relevant to numerous neurodegenerative diseases ranging from the common diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease) to rarer ones (e.g. motor neurone disease and Neimann-Pick disease).

    Reference: Tyler SEB, Tyler LDK. Therapeutic roles of plants for 15 hypothesised causal bases of Alzheimer's disease. Nat Prod Bioprospect. 2022 Aug 23;12(1):34. doi: 10.1007/s13659-022-00354-z.