Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0086543 (cataract)
 29,165 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The use of plants is as old as the mankind. Natural products are cheap and claimed to be safe. They are also suitable raw material for production of new synthetic agents. Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis Linn.) is a common household plant grown in many parts of the world. It is used for flavouring food, a beverage drink, as well as in cosmetics; in folk.medicine it is used as an antispasmodic in renal colic and dysmenorrhoea, in relieving respiratory disorders and to stimulate growth of hair. Extract of rosemary relaxes smooth muscles of trachea and intestine, and has choleretic, hepatoprotective and antitumerogenic activity. The most important constituents of rosemary are caffeic acid and its derivatives such as rosmarinic acid. These compounds have antioxidant effect. The phenolic compound, rosmarinic acid, obtains one of its phenolic rings from phenylalanine via caffeic acid and the other from tyrosine via dihydroxyphenyl-lactic acid. Relatively large-scale production of rosmarinic acid can be obtained from the cell culture of Coleus blumei Benth when supplied exogenously with phenylalanine and tyrosine. Rosmarinic acid is well absorbed from gastrointestinal tract and from the skin. It increases the production of prostaglandin E2 and reduces the production of leukotriene B4 in human polymorphonuclear leucocytes, and inhibits the complement system. It is concluded that rosemary and its constituents especially caffeic acid derivatives such as rosmarinic acid have a therapeutic potential in treatment or prevention of bronchial asthma, spasmogenic disorders, peptic ulcer, inflammatory diseases, hepatotoxicity, atherosclerosis, ischaemic heart disease, cataract, cancer and poor sperm motility.
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PMID:Pharmacology of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis Linn.) and its therapeutic potentials. 1064 Nov 30

Human aldose reductase (hAR) is the key enzyme in sorbitol pathway of glucose utilization and is implicated in the etiology of secondary complications of diabetes, such as, cardiovascular complications, neuropathy, nephropathy, retinopathy, and cataract genesis. It reduces glucose to sorbitol in the presence of NADPH and the major cause of diabetes complications could be the change in the osmotic pressure due to the accumulation of sorbitol. An activated form of hAR (activated hAR or ahAR) poses a potential obstacle in the development of diabetes drugs as hAR-inhibitors are ineffective against ahAR. The therapeutic efficacy of such drugs is compromised when a large fraction of the enzyme (hAR) undergoes conversion to the activated ahAR form as has been observed in the diabetic tissues. In the present study, attempts have been made to employ systems biology strategies to identify the elementary nodes of human polyol metabolic pathway, responsible for normal metabolic states, followed by the identification of natural potent inhibitors of the activated form of hAR represented by the mutant C298S for possible antidiabetic applications. Quantum Mechanical Molecular Mechanical docking strategy was used to determine the probable inhibitors of ahAR. Rosmarinic acid was found as the most potent natural ahAR inhibitor and warrants for experimental validation in the near future.
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PMID:Inhibition of C298S mutant of human aldose reductase for antidiabetic applications: Evidence from in silico elementary mode analysis of biological network model. 2969 78