A Narrative Review on the Anti-genotoxic Potential of Medicinal Plants in Ayurveda

Genotoxicity is the capacity of drugs to induce DNA damage by chemically modifying either the structure or the sequence of nucleotides. This is most commonly experienced in lifestyle disorders as the medication in these conditions requires long-term administration. As per the WHO’s current status, 74% of the current deaths in a year are due to lifestyle disorders. Traditional plant-based medicines play a major role in the prevention of a few communicable diseases. Apart from the prevention of disease, they provide a protective effect against the ill effects induced by oxidative stress due to diet and regimes. The current review contains articles from PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases from October 2021 – September 2022 by searching keywords including “anti-genotoxicity” or “mutagenicity” or “anti-mutagenicity” and “in vitro” or “in vivo” and “plants” or “medicinal plants”. After review, 45 articles were included, which contained information about 38 plants. This article rationalises the long-term usage of medicinal plants in treating various health conditions.