Mucuna pruriens as Nano Herbal Medicine: A Review

Abstract

Mucuna pruriens is a plant that contains phytochemical compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, phenols, and terpenoids. In addition, M pruriens also contains l-dopa, a dopamine precursor which is widely used in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, M. pruriens is widely used as herbal medicine. However, herbal medicines have some disadvantages of low solubility, bioavailability, and stability. The integration of nanotechnology in the development of herbal medicines can be a solution to these problems. Nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens has been synthesized as both metal and polymeric composites. In this review article, we discuss the synthesis, characteristics, and pharmacological activities of nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens. This study was carried out by collecting several articles and focuses on discussing about the synthesis process, characteristic, and pharmacological activity of various nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens including antiParkinson, antioxidant, and antimicrobial activity. Synthesis of nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens both in metal or polymeric composites was successfully carried out using harmless materials and conditions. The synthesis process is requires a short time about 10 to 120 minutes. SEM and TEM analysis of nano herbal M. pruriens showed the synthesized nano herbal medicine have various size between 10 to 170 nm with spherical and oval shapes. FTIR spectroscopy showed typical absorption for O-H, C-H, C=C, C=O, and C-O bonds according to flavonoids, phenolics, proteins, amino acids, and l-dopa. The wavenumber shift in FTIR spectra indicates the interaction of active compounds to form and stabilizes nanoparticles. Nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens showed strong antiParkinson's, antioxidant, and moderate antimicrobial activity. Nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens showed a significant increases in antioxidant and antiParkinson's activity compared to M. pruriens extract itself. Thus, the synthesized nano herbal medicine from M. pruriens has better activity than M. pruriens extract and has the potential to increase the utility of M. pruriens to be used as an antioxidant, antimicrobial, and therapy for Parkinson's disease.