the role of iranian medicinal plants of the asteraceae family in pain therapy: a systematic review

Asteraceae or compositae is considered as one of the main flowering plants around the world which presently have more than 23,600 accepted species from 1,620 genera and 13 subfamilies. the present study aims to systematically review the role of iranian medicinal plants of the family asteraceae in pain therapy. we searched several databases, including scopus, pubmed, web of science, embase, google scholar, magiran, and sid without time limitation for publications related to antinociceptive effects of iranian medicinal herbs of the ateraceae family. studies in any language were entered in the search phase if they had an english abstract. of the 1080 papers obtained from all of the databases up to 2020, 20 articles were reliable and were scrutinized. the most abundant parts of these plants are aerial parts (17 papers, 85%). based on the obtained results, the most abundant products were hydroalcohol extract (10 papers, 45.5%) and essential oils (8 papers, 40%) of the medicinal herbs of the asteraceae family. the most frequently tests used were formalin test (77.3%), followed by writhing test (54.5%) and tailflick test (36.4%). the findings of the present review demonstrated that the iranian medicinal herbs of the asteraceae family are generally used to treat and reduce pain. although herbs in this family may be considered as alternative agents for pain treatment, further studies are required to clear the accurate antinociceptive mechanisms as well as toxicity of these plants in human subjects.