Lepidium sativum Linn: Applications and Pharmaceutical Excipient Properties

Natural gums and mucilages are familiar for their medicinal and pharmaceutical excipient properties. Mucilages from plant sources are found to be very potential, interesting and valuable in development of desired pharmaceutical dosage forms. Lepidium sativum Linn (Family Cruciferae)is oe of the mucilage containing edible annual herb used to treat various human ailments.The plant possesses flavonoids, coumarins, sulphur glycosides, triterpenes, sterols and various imidazole alkaloids. Parts of plats such as leaves, fruits and seeds along with various extracts of them have different pharmaceutical activities. Lepidium sativum seeds contains large amounts of mucilaginous constituents when soaked in water and a transparent gel forms around the whole seed. It mainly consists of polysaccharides, especially cellulose and uronic acid. Recently mucilarge obtained from its seeds been explored for its excipient property in the development and design of various pharmaceutical dosage forms. This review mainly focuses on application and pharmaceutical excipients properties of mulicage of Lepidium sativum Linn.