Evidence for health-promoting properties of Lepidium sativum L.: an updated comprehensive review

Lepidium sativum L. (L. sativum) is a common herb distributed worldwide, used as food ingredient and therapeutic agent in traditional medicine for treating health related disorders. L. sativum and its extracts have been reported to represent numerous biological activities including anti-microbial, anti-diabetic, anti-oxidant, antidiarrheal, anti-cancer and numerous health-promoting effects in animal and in vitro studies. The aim of this review is to discuss and highlight the findings that describes important biological functions and therapeutic effects of L. sativum in different cell lines and animal models. In this review, the English-language articles were gathered from electronic databases including PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar with no time limit applied to any database. The search terms used in this review include, ‘Lepidium sativum L.' and/or ‘chemical composition’, ‘health benefits', ‘antimicrobial’, ‘antioxidant’, ‘anticancer’, ‘diuretic’, ‘nephro-protection’, 'antidiarrheal', ‘anti-diabetic’, ‘anti-asthmatic’, ‘neuroprotection’, ‘metabolic’, ‘bone fracture’, and ‘reproductive performance’. Additional and eligible studies were collected from reference lists of appropriate articles. The information presented will be helpful to attract more interest towards medicinal plants by defining as well as developing novel clinical applications and new drug formulations in the future. Pre-clinical studies exhibited that L. sativum, possess potent health-promoting effects involving various molecular mechanisms. Taken all together, data suggested that identified herbal plants such as L. sativum, can be exploited as nutritional and therapeutic agents to combat various ailments. Despite several research in this field, further comprehensive in vitro/in vivo studies and clinical trials are needed to identify the mechanisms underlying the biological and therapeutic activities of L. sativum.