Cardio-protective and anti-cancer therapeutic potential of Nigella sativa

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 Department of Food Technology, PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, 43600 Pakistan

2 Department of Food Technology, PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, 43600 Pakistan Corn, Soybean and Wheat Quality Labs., 205 Williams Hall, 1680 Madison Avenue, Wooster, OH 44691 USA

Abstract

Nigella sativa is the miraculous plant having a lot of nutritional and medicinal benefits, and attracts large number of nutrition and pharmacological researchers. N. sativa seed composition shows that it is the blessing of nature and it contains and many bioactive compounds like thymoquinone, α-hederin, alkaloids, flavonoids, antioxidants, fatty acids many other compounds that have positive effects on curing of different diseases. Several medicinal properties of N. sativa like its anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, antioxidant activities and many others are well acknowledged. However, this article focuses on activity of N. sativa against cardiovascular diseases and cancer. For gathering required data the authors went through vast number of articles using search engines like Science direct, ELSEVIER, Pub Med, Willey on Line Library and Google scholar and the findings were classified on the basis of relevance of the topic and were reviewed in the article. N. sativa is rich source of different biologically active compounds and is found effective in controlling number of cardiovascular diseases and various cancers both in vivo and in vitro studies.

Keywords


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