medicinal plants with abortifacient or emmenagogue activity: a narrative review based on traditional persian medicine

Context: traditional persian medicine (tpm) has a rich background and has introduced various plants with abortive or emmenagogue activity since ancient times. however, many of them are unknown in modern medicine, and a few trials have been conducteddescribing their efficacy and safety. these plants may be helpful for the management of incomplete abortion, with potentially lowerside effects than chemical agents. this review introduced these plants and their potential efficiency to link traditional and modernmedicine and suggested further studies.evidence acquisition: the search strategy for citations in this narrative review was performed in two steps. at first, medicinalplants used as abortifacient or emmenagogue to manage incomplete abortions or retained products of conception were searchedand extracted in the most famous tpm literature, including al-qanun fi at-tibb, tuhfat-al-momenin, and makhzan-ul-advia. the nextstep was searching electronic databases including pubmed, scopus, web of science, and google scholar with the same keywordsand herbal plants between 1970 and 2021. the overlapped plants between the manual and electronic search were found and brieflydescribed.results: in tpm literature, 88 plants with abortifacient activity were found, of which 47 were used to manage incomplete abortionsor retained products of conception. also, in the electronic database search, 14 plants were found to have abortifacient or emmenagogue activity. among them, six plants, including sesamum indicum l. (sesame), commiphora myrrha (myrrh), lawsonia inermisl. (henna), opopanax chironium l. (jooshir), plumbago rosea (shitraj or stumbag), and juniperus sabina (abhal), overlapped with themanual search results. the abortifacient or emmenagogue activity and properties of all these 14 plants were described.conclusions: the properties of many traditional plants with abortifacient activity are unknown inmodernmedicine; however, theyshould not be used in pregnant women. nonetheless, they may have the power to be entered into modern medicine. identifyingtheir pharmacology and action mechanisms may be helpful to introduce them as a potential alternative to chemical agents in themanagement of induced or incomplete abortion with possibly lower side effects.