An ulcer is disease of epithelial cells of body or organ which represents an open sore in the lining of epithelial cells or deep lesion in the specific region resulting into its degradation thus disrupting the normal physiology of the organ affected. The damage can be to the extent of bleeding, which is commonly known as bleeding sore. Ulcer is known to exist in pre-historic era with, published cases around 3000 BC. Hippocrates the “father of medicine”, (460 - 370 BC), defined ulcer when he first demarcated cancer terming it as carcinos and carcinoma and mentioned it as non-ulcer forming and ulcer forming tumors. The present review focuses on history of ulcer, its types, pathophysiology, Anti-ulcer drugs, Anti-ulcer medicinal plants, diagnostic tests for ulcers and current status of global clinical trials conducted on ulcers. The review is drafted via an exhaustive literature review from popular scientific search engines mainly, pubmed, science-direct, google scholar as well as articles present in google search. Author strongly believes in maintaining proper balanced diet to ward off or restrict the occurrence of ulcer in humans. He also believes that traditional medicines should be researched more and more, followed by inculcating it into modern medical practice for the benefit of homo-sapiens. Traditional medicines or to point out clearly, the medicinal plants have wider range of therapeutic advantages in the proper management of disease, as they have better pharmacological activity along with low incidence of side effects or the adverse effects. Anti-ulcer therapeutics have wider market globally citing the fact of prevalence of ulcers in humans and animals. Medicinal plants also thus have huge market for themselves in our ultimate goal of providing healing touch to the diseases person. Clinical trials are happening around the globe, including India, in their effort to come up with specific therapeutic strategies to deal with ulcers and occurrence of other diseases. Time will be no far, when clinical trials conducted, would help in bringing out clear therapeutic goal to reduce the occurrence of ulcers and better management of this disease to serve the mankind.
Loading....