Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways projected as a serious public health problem with over 300 million sufferers worldwide and creates a burden in health care costs, lost productivity and reduced participation in family life. Prevalence is increasing, most rapidly in children especially where urbanization is taking place. Regardless the recent advances in modern medicines leading to better management of the disease, the current modes of therapy do not offer the cure of the disease but control the symptoms with significant side effects reasonably leads to high prevalence of usage of traditional medicine in the management of asthma. Herbal preparations have been cited as the third most popular complementary treatment modality by asthma sufferers. A comprehensive literature search was performed to scale up the series of studies performed on various Indian medicinal plants identified as bronchodilators, antagonist of various asthma mediators such as histamine and platelet activating factor, corticosteroid levels, and clearance of mucus. The present review summarizes the plethora of traditional medicinal plants role in the treatment of various aspects of asthma which need to be investigated further to explore the novel medicines in the armament of asthma treatment.
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