Chemical Review on Artemisia herba alba

Natural products represent a very important entity and valuable leads in pharmaceutical drug discovery and drug design as the lead compound can be originally obtained from a natural source, can be a precursor for a semi synthetic compound, can be totally synthesized to mimic a natural product or can act as a template for a structurally different total synthetic compound. Plants were used as the source of many drugs as digoxin, taxol, morphine and salicylic acid. Artemisia herba alba Asso. as one of the most important medicinal plants is a plant belongs to family Asteraceae. It is well known in Arabic as shih. It has been used in traditional medicine for treatment of diabetes, hypertension and for its antibacterial and analgesic properties. This review summarizes the diverse chemical constituents of Artemisia herba alba which includes many chemical classes as sesquiterpenes, monoterpenes, flavonoids, flavonoid glycosides, sterols, coumarins, essential oils and many miscellaneous compounds.