Beneficial health effects of lupenone triterpene: A review

Abstract

There are a large number of new structure compounds with good pharmacological activity in the natural plants, can be applied to the treatment of human diseases. Finding active ingredients from the plants is one of the important ways to develop new drugs. Triterpenes are widespread in plants, and lupenone belongs to lupane type triterpenoids. Lupenone is very common natural ingredient distributed in multi-family plants including Asteraceae, Balanophoraceae, Cactaceae, Iridaceae, Musaceae, Urticaceae, Leguminosae, Bombacaceae, etc., but its distribution has no regular. The consumption of lupenone in vegetarian diet is high in human life. Pharmacological screening of lupenone revealed various pharmacological activities including anti-inflammatory, anti-virus, anti-diabetes, anti-cancer, improving Chagas disease without major toxicity. Based on these important pharmacological activities, this review provides detailed account of pre-clinical studies conducted to determine the utility of lupenone as a therapeutic and chemopreventive agent for the treatment of various diseases.

Keywords: Chagas disease; Diabetes; Inflammation; Lupenone; Tumor; Virus.