A review on heckel: traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacological activities, and toxicology.

Purpose: is a medicinal plant commonly known as bitter kola. It is utilised in ethnomedicine for the treatment of diarrhoea, bronchitis, bacterial infection, cough, hepatitis, gonorrhoea, laryngitis, food poison, liver and gastric diseases.

Objective: This study reviewed the phytochemistry, pharmacological activities, and ethnomedicinal potentials of .

Materials And Methods: An extensive review was performed using electronic literature collated from ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, and PubMed databases.

Results: Phytochemical analysis revealed the isolation of several chemical compounds including 9-octadecenoic acid, linoleic acid, 14-methylpentadecanoic acid, 1-butanol, hexadecanamide, I-4',II-4',I-5,II-5,I-7,II-7-hexahydroxy-I-3,II-8-biflavanone, lanost-7-en-3-one, kolaflavanone (8E)-4-geranyl-3,5-dihydroxybenzophenone, glutinol, Garcinia biflavonoid (GB-2a-II-4'-OMe), 9,19-cyclolanost-24-en-3-ol, 24-methylene, tirucallol, lupeol, β-amyrin, obtusifoliol and Kolaviron. Diverse pharmacological and investigations revealed that has anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, anti-asthmatic, neuroprotective, antioxidant, and antidiabetic activities.

Conclusion: The present study revealed that has preventive and therapeutic potentials against various diseases in both and studies and therefore can be utilised as a raw material in the pharmaceutical industries for the development of therapeutic products. However, there is a need for clinical trial experiments to validate and provide accurate and substantial information on the required safe dosage and efficacy for the treatment of several diseases.