Free radicals or other reactive oxygen species produced during aerobic metabolism in the body. These oxidative species react with cell components such as lipids, proteins, mitochondria and DNA, can cause oxidative stress and contribute to more than one hundreds of diseases in humans including atherosclerosis, arthritis, ischemia, abnormal neurogenesis and neuronal degradation, gastritis, aging, liver diseases, cancer and AIDS. Antioxidants, both exogenous and endogenous help to neutralise the effect of free radicals via prevention of the free radical formation by scavenging free radical scavengers, preventing the radical chain reaction of oxidation and inhibiting the oxidation process. Antioxidant may be synthetic and natural. But some synthetic antioxidants have been reported unsafe for human health. Therefore, the demand of natural antioxidant is increasing due to their wide application and therapeutic efficacy with minimal side effects. The present review collected the information of potential antioxidant plants with emphasis their botanical source, common name and other biological activities, which would be helpful to develop new antioxidant herbal formulations.
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