Natural products in ulcers

Peptic ulcer disease (encompassing gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer) disease affects a large portion of the world population. This occurs due to an imbalance between offensive and defensive factors. Helicobacter pylori infection is recognized as the leading cause of ulcer in the world, particularly in non developed countries, it comes under offensive factors and other agents such as alcohol and non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs gain importance in developed countries comes under defensive factors. Nowadays the main line of approach in the treatment of peptic ulceration is the eradication of H. pylori infection. A large number of anti-ulcer drugs, including antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors and H2 receptor antagonists are available for the treatment of peptic ulcer disease, but clinical evaluations of these drugs have shown incidence of relapse, side effects, drug interactions and rebound hyper secretion following drug withdrawal which leads to high ulcer relapse rate. This has been the rationale for the development of new anti-ulcer drugs and thus search for novel molecules has been extended from plant sources that can offer better protection and have better safety profile.