Gout Remedies in Traditional Iranian Medicine (TIM)

Practice and study of medicine in iran has a long and prolific history. iran hasall characteristics of an indigenous culture which has so far discovered numerousnatural products. unfortunately, scant research has been conducted on thissystem of medicine and ethnopharmacology of iran. gout is a historical diseasethat is still widespread all around the world. as numerous remedies used to beadministered for treating gout in tim, we decided to investigate drugs used totarget gout. to accomplish this, five of most important references of tim formthe 9th to the 18th century were investigated for gout remedies. for all herbalremedies, an extensive search of the scientific data banks, medline and scopus,was done to find recent possible results concerning the xanthine oxidase inhibitory,anti-inflammatory, and analgesic activities. one hundred and nine plantspecies, 31 animals, 14 minerals, and one mushroom were identified. fourteen,twenty eight and three plant species have shown in vitro xanthine oxidase inhibitory,anti inflammatory and analgesic activities, respectively; also nine, forty andtwenty two in vivo activities and two, seventeen and eight human studies werecarried out for these three properties. fifty-four drugs were cited in at least threereferences. tim has the potential to be a very rewarding source of medical andmedicinal knowledge. then, a special focus should be put on drugs as well asthe therapeutic method targeting the gout treatment. owing to the limited attentionso far paid to treating gout in tim, it seems pertinent to conduct a systematicresearch on remedies which were used in tim.