Abstract

*Varsha K. and Arun Kumar K. V.

ABSTRACT

Inflammation is the normal response of al living tissue to an injury. When a harmful stimuli such as pathogen, irritants or damaged cells attack the healthy viable tissue, it fight against the stimuli in the form of inflammation. Therefore it can be called as normal biological response. Otherwise the inflammation can be considered as the essential stage of healing and repairing. The ultimate goal of inflammation is to replace the injured tissue. Herbs were used for the therapeutic purpose for decades in one form or another in the indigenous system of medicine such as Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani. India has a treasure of medicinal plants. These plants are rich sources of various bioactive principles such as alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, flavonoids, phenols, terpenoids etc. All parts of these medicinal plants are reported to posses a wide variety of ethanobotanical and pharmacological activities. Therefore they become valuable for the management of various life threatening ailments. The use of herbs as the key ingredient for the production of drugs is getting better acceptance nowadays since they have less side effects and adverse reactions as compared to synthetic medicine. They are cost effective and easily available when considering the ordinary people. This review article mainly focus to study the phytochemical constituents and ethanomedical uses two important plants Rubia cordifolia and Tinospora cordifolia which have well established anti inflammatory activity according to the traditional system of medicine.