Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_5381_Библиотеки_им_академика_М_И_Перельмана

et al., 2000; Singh et al., 2015; Wadhwa et al., 2016). It is commonly known as Ash-

wagandha, Asgandh, Indian ginseng, Pevetti or Winter cherry, etc., and belongs to the family Solanaceae. Its generic name Withania is in the honor of the Sir Henry Thomas Maire Witham (an English paleobotanist), with an orthographic variation of the last alphabet “m” into “n” with the addition of a commemorative termination “ia,” whereas the specific epithet “somnifera” is derived from two Latin words “som- nus” (meaning sleep) and “fero” (meaning to bear) that are linked to its sleep­inducing properties (Mir et al., 2012). Its most common Indian name Ashwagandha has been derived from two words “ashva” (meaning horse) and “gandha” (meaning smelling) because of the resemblance of the smell of its roots to a sweating horse (Rajeswara Rao et al., 2012). It is one of the 36 plants that is under cultivation already, due to their high demand and require the crop improvement efforts to develop/provide the elite cultivars to the growers, in order to increase their farm in­come (Ved and Goraya, 2007). Due to its immense therapeutic potential, it has also appeared in the World Health Organization (WHO) monographs on selected medic­inal plants (Mirjalili et al., 2009).

W. somnifera is an important medicinal plant of the dicot family, Solanaceae. Despite some variation in the morphological characters of the plants in different cultivated and wild accessions (Khanna et al., 2014; Kumar et al., 2007), the plants are generally erect, evergreen, annual or perennial undershrub with branched, hairy-tomentose stem bearing broadly ovate, pubescent, and petiolate leaves. The leaves are usually entire along the margins (sometimes wavy), acute to obtuse from the a pex, dorsiventral with a prominent midrib (with broad abaxial hump), and its lamina is bilaterally symmetrical with abundant epidermal trichomes on its abaxial side. Leaves on their axil bear umbellate cyme cl uster of pale green flowers, which appear throughout the year. Flowers are sessile to subsessile, shortly pedicellate, pentamerous, hermaphrodite, yellow to dull green in color. Ca­lyx is gamosepalous, campanulate, green, and sepals are five in number. Corolla is gamopetalous, campanulate, greenish yellow, lobes that are triangular and tomen­tose to the outer side. Anthers are usually five in number, subincluded, and anther filaments are elongated. Fruit (berry) varying from yellow-orange to deep red in color is enclosed in persistent inflated calyx, globose, containing numerous, small, subpyriform to reniform, mi n utely reticulate-foveolate, yellowish-brown, smooth discoid seeds.

In a study focused to analyze the antistress potential, mood-enhancing properties of Shoden (a standardized Ashwagandha root extract) and its safety profile of healthy adults suffering from mild stress, it was recorded that with the supplemen­tation of Ashwagandha (Shoden), decrease in morning cortisol, self-report depres­sion, anxiety, stress scale-21, and clinician-administered Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale was observed, whereas the levels of testosterone were enhanced in the males (Lopresti et al., 2019). This study emphasized on the stress-relieving potential of W. somnifera through regulatory properties on the hypothalamusepituitaryeadrenal axis. The root extracts (ethanolic) o f W. somnifera have also been reported to inhibit lipogenesis (fatty acid synthesis) in the human prostate cancer cell lines (22Rv1 and LNCaP) and hence revealed the anticancer potential of ethanolic root extracts in treating prostate cancer (Kim et al., 2020). Further, the nephron-protective potential

with the efficacy and binding energies equivalent to

There are some problems associated with the crop, which limit its cultivation and popularization as herbal medicine. Some of these major challenges have been dis­cussed below and some of the efforts made in overcoming these challenges have also been highlighted.