Natural products as a crucial source of antiinflammatory drugs: recent trends and advancements

Natural active molecules are key sources of modern innovative drugs. Particularly, a great amount of natural active molecules have been reported to possess promising therapeutic effects on inflammatory diseases, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis, enteritis, metabolic disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. However, these natural active molecules with various molecular structures usually exert antiinflammatory effects through diversiform pharmacological mechanisms, which is necessary to be summarized systematically. In this review, we introduced the current major antiinflammatory natural active molecules based on their chemical structures, and discussed their pharmacological mechanisms including antiinflammatory molecular signaling pathways and potential target proteins, which providing a referential significance on the development of novel antiinflammatory drugs, and also revealing new therapeutic strategies for inflammatory diseases.