Herbal Extracts Exhibit Anti-Epilepsy Properties

Epilepsy refers to a group of persistent neurological illnesses characterized by seizures. It is a chronic brain disease that affects 50 million people in the world, being one of the most common neurological disorders. Developing countries account for over 90% of all epilepsy patients. Epileptic seizures are caused by aberrant, excessive, or hyper synchronized neuronal activity in the brain. The cause of most epileptic seizures is unknown. However, some people develop epilepsy as a result of a brain injury, stroke, brain tumor, or drug and alcohol abuse. Anti-seizure drugs remain the mainstay in the treatment of epilepsy and about 70% of epileptics become seizure-free when antiseizure medications are taken effectively. However, some of these medications have significant pharmacological interactions and undesirable side effects. Traditional utilization of plants extracts for treatment of epilepsy is widely practiced. Many plants extracts and herbal formulations have been studied to determine their efficacy in treatment of epilepsy. This paper presents a review on herbal extracts that have shown antiepileptic activity in animal models published in the last ten years (between 2014 and 2024). The study found that plant extracts from some 138 plant species belonging to 54 different plant families were evaluated for antiepileptic efficacy. The most studied plants belong to the Asteraceae family (19%) followed by Fabaceae (9%), Apiaceae (8%), Lamiaceae (8%), Apocynaceae (7%), Cucurbitaceae (3%), Euphorbiaceae (3%) and Rutaceae (3%). In most cases, the studies focused only on the crude extracts without any attempts to identify the antiepileptic compounds from the plants. The most commonly used model in the antiepileptic assays were found to be pentylenetetrazole and maximal electroshock models. The findings from this study confirm that plant extracts have significant efficacy that needs to be explored for antiepileptic formulation and drugs development. It is also necessary to perform bioassay guided phytochemical evaluation to isolate and characterize the antiepileptic principles.