Herbal Remedies for Atherosclerosis: From Back to the Future

Cardiovascular disorders are the most important reason of mortality all over the world. Atherosclerosis is the inflammation of the blood vessels, especially large muscular arteries, which is caused by a series of pathological conditions including hyperlipidemia, hypertension, some types of infection and diabetes mellitus. Despite the available chemical drugs to manage the disease, researchers are widely working on other approaches like herbal medicine for the management of atherosclerosis. Alone or as complementary therapy with chemical drugs, medicinal plants have shown beneficial effects for primary or secondary prevention of cardiovascular problems. In this chapter, we firstly introduce herbal remedies traditionally used for the treatment of atherosclerosis-associated disorders in ethnomedicine of different nations throughout the world, and then we discuss clinical evidence on the most relevant medicinal plants as well as the isolated phytochemicals used for the management of atherosclerosis.

Keywords: Atherosclerosis, Clinical Trial, Endothelial Dysfunction, Ethnopharmacology, Herbal Medicine, Hypercholesterolemia, Hyperlipidemia, Hypertension, Meta-Analysis, Medicinal Plant, Phytochemical, Type II Diabetes.