centella asiatica (l.) urban from traditional medicine to modern medicine with neuroprotective potential积雪草的(l).pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2012, Article ID 946259, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2012/946259 Review Article Centella asiatica (L.) Urban: From Traditional Medicine to Modern Medicine with Neuroprotective Potential Ilkay Erdogan Orhan1, 2 1 Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University, 06330 Ankara, Turkey 2 Department of Pharmacognosy and Pharmaceutical Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy, Eastern Mediterranean University, Gazimagosa, (Famagusta), Cyprus Correspondence should be addressed to Ilkay Erdogan Orhan, iorhan@.tr Received 14 January 2012; Revised 27 February 2012; Accepted 6 March 2012 Academic Editor: Mahmud Tareq Hassan Khan Copyright © 2012 Ilkay Erdogan Orhan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper covers the studies relevant to neuroprotective activity of Centella asiatica (L.) Urban, also known as “Gotu Kola.” The plant is native to the Southeast Asia and has been used traditionally as brain tonic in ayurvedic medicine. The neuroprotective effect of C. asiatica has been searched using the key words “Centella, Centella asiatica, gotu kola, Asiatic pennywort, neuroprotection, and memory” through the electronic databases including Sciencedirect, Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed, and Google Scholar. According to the literature survey, C. asiatica (gotu kola) has been reported to have a comprehensive neuroprotection by different modes of action such as enzyme inhibition, prevention of amyloid plaque formation in Alzheimer’s disease, dopamine neurotoxicity in Parkinson’s di