Inflammation is a defense response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli such as pathogens, irritants, or infections, and is the core of many diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, atherosclerosis, diabetes, neurodegeneration, allergy, infection, and cancer. At present, pharmacological strategies to suppress inflammation focus on agonists of the glucocorticoid receptor (glucocorticoids), interference with eicosanoid biosynthesis (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs - NSAIDs), and the blockade of pro-inflammatory cytokine signaling (biologic targeting TNF-α and IL-1 signaling). However, these strategies have some drawbacks, such as only explicit key targets associated with the respective disease are exploited but not the majority of disease-relevant signaling pathways, complex pharmacokinetics, as well as adverse effects. Instead, natural products present characteristics of low toxicity and outstanding pharmacological effects, in particular, anti-inflammatory activity.

Natural products are an increasing resource of potential new anti-inflammatory drugs. Current studies have found that anti-inflammatory natural products such as polysaccharides, flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, natural pigments, plant volatile oils, quinones, polyphenols and so on. The mechanism of natural products anti-inflammatory effect relies on inhibiting the activation of NF-κB pathway, MAPK pathway, TLR pathway, STAT pathway-related factors, and decreasing the expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, iNOS, and COX-2. Although there are many studies on the anti-inflammatory effects of natural products, there still are some challenges as follows:
(1) The anti-inflammatory mechanisms of many natural products are complex, multi-component, and multi-target.
(2) The extraction and separation of effective components from natural resources need to be further improved.
(3) Clinical evaluation strategy for natural products need to be reviewed.

In this Research Topic, we welcome the following subtopics, but not limited to:
• Evaluation of anti-inflammatory effects of natural products in vitro and in vivo In the context of chronic inflammation.
• Extraction and analysis of medicinal ingredients of various natural products with anti-inflammatory effects. If it’s a mixture, it requires component analysis and quality control by chromatographic analysis or/and mass spectrometry.
• Research on the anti-inflammatory mechanism of natural products in the context of chronic inflammation, signal translation, signal pathway, target screening, and anti-inflammatory factors.
• Clinical research of natural products or traditional medicine with anti-inflammatory effects.

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All the manuscripts submitted to the Section Ethnopharmacoloy will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here).

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