Medicinal Plants Exhibiting Antifertility Activity: A Review

Abstract

This review reveals that some plants and their part used having anti-fertility action, which are helpful for researcher to develop new herbal anti-fertility formulations. In the recent years, interest in drugs of plant origin has been progressively increased. The aim of this review is to highlight the work on anti-fertility of plant origin. We undertook an extensive bibliographic review by analysing peer reviewed papers, and further consulting well accepted worldwide scientific databases. Peer reviewed articles were gathered consulting the databases NISCAIR, SCOPUS, PUBMED and Google scholar using terms such as “antifertility”, “anti-implantation”, and “antispermatogenic” activity of plants. Plants, including their parts and extracts, that have traditionally been used to facilitate antifertility have been considered as antifertility agents. In this paper, various medicinal plants have been reviewed for thorough studies such as Aegle marmelos, Chenopodium ambrosioides, Jatropha gossypifolia, Leonotis ocymifolia. For women who can't use modern forms of contraception due to adverse effect or other reasons, therefore herbs can offer alternatives and reducing fertility would be better than other contraceptives. This review creates a solid foundation upon which to further study the efficacy of plants that are both currently used by women as traditional antifertility medicines, but also could be efficacious as an antifertility agent with additional research and study.