Global traditional and Indigenous medicine in psychoneuroimmunology

Abstract

Humans have successfully used traditional botanicals as medicines for thousands of years. Many of these continue to be used today. Indeed, one of today’s most used medicinal drugs, salicylic acid (Aspirin), was in common use in ancient Egypt, more than 3000 years ago. Aspirin inhibits pro-inflammatory COX-1 and promotes the anti-inflammatory activity of COX-2 to reduce inflammation, a mechanism useful in curbing pain and reducing fever. Another example is artemisinin, a compound extracted from a Chinese medicinal herb known as artemisia, which has been widely used to treat against malaria. Across the world similar compounds are being used in traditional medicine with crucial relevance to modern psychoneuroimmunology. This Special Issue highlights outstanding mechanistic and reproducible research on traditional medicines that will inform modern psychoneuroimmunology and related study. This Special Issue showcases traditional medicines from across the globe, from the Himalayas to Africa and many places in between. The Special Issue describes important anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties of a variety of botanicals with clinical and pre-clinical outcomes. It also describes some equally important “negative” data on some popular candidates including green tea and cannabis. Together these studies reveal candidate traditional medicines with real-world effects at least as good as current pharmaceuticals.