This Research Topic is part of a series. See also Volume I:
Medicinal Plants for Cardiovascular and Neurodegenerative Aging-related Diseases: From Bench to Bedside.
Ageing is a progressive and multi-step degeneration in the physiological functions and metabolic processes of living organisms until death. It represents the main risk factor for a number of debilitating diseases and contributes to increase in mortality. With increasing life expectancy, the number of patients with aging related diseases will continue to rise, leading to an increased healthcare burden. There is a need for new therapies to treat this growing number of patients in a manner that is effective and sustainable.
Ageing presents profound physiological changes in the cardiovascular system and the relationship between cardiovascular pathology and neurodegenerative diseases is well known. Ischemic events due to cardiac pathology or stroke can lead to cardiovascular dementia and the development of Alzheimer's disease. Cardiac pathology has also been found to be associated with other neurodegenerative conditions such as Huntington’s disease. Interestingly, it is hypothesized that factors systemically linking these pathologies are associated with neuroinflammation and oxidative stress pathways. While the underlying mechanisms in the aging heart or brain are still unclear, greater research is needed to test the potential for pharmacological interventions in these pathways.
Traditionally, medicinal plants have been used for thousands of years all over the world. Great varieties of plants have persisted in such usage for medicinal treatments in various cultures and many new drugs have been discovered from herbal sources. The 2015 Nobel Prize awarded to Professor Tu, a Chinese pharmaceutical scientist, for the discovery of artemisinin renewed global interest in herbal medicine, and potential integration of such approaches into evidence-based medical systems. Medicinal plants have shown to be beneficial in decreasing the occurrence or delay of the neurodegenerative process induced by cardiovascular and mixed pathological events. It is believed that many of the medicinal herbs have anti-aging properties, but the mechanisms and safety remain unclear.
In this Research Topic, authors are invited to submit Review or Original Research articles adapting a critical approach designed to robustly test the clinical effects (or otherwise), mechanisms and safety of adequately-characterized herbal medicine and their active components for aging-related diseases – in particular, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.
The subtopics to be covered within this issue are listed below:
1. Reviews of high-quality literature testing effects of herbal medicine for aging related diseases, especially cardiovascular and/or neurodegenerative diseases.
2. The role of herbal medicine for aging related diseases (in vitro and in vivo studies) especially cardiovascular and/or neurodegenerative diseases.
3. Mechanism or target prediction of herbal medicine for aging related diseases based on network pharmacology.
4. Safety revaluation of herbal medicine for aging related diseases, especially cardiovascular and/or neurodegenerative diseases.
5. Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials or primary clinical data to evaluate the efficacy, or otherwise, of herbal medicine for aging related diseases, especially cardiovascular and/or neurodegenerative diseases. Please note primary Clinical Trials will not be accepted for review.
6. Critical assessments of current approaches that may slow the adoption of phytomedical approaches in evidence-based medicine to treat cardiovascular and neurodegenerative aging-related diseases are most welcome. For example, Commentaries on potential drawbacks in clinical trial design in this sphere and the quality of the resulting literature.
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All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).