New Frontier and the Advanced Herbal Approaches for the Treatment of Lymphatic Filariasis

Lymphatic filariasis causes serious health problems in tropical and subtropical developing countries of the world and more than 1.3 billion people are infected. Lymphatic filariasis is disease targeted for elimination by global programme. Global elimination programme have two main objectives one is drug transmission of the parasites and another to provide care for those with the disease. Mass drug administration plays a major for the transmission interruption of disease. Modern synthetic drugs found to be very effective for that purpose, but cause lots of side effects. A large no. of medicinal plants have been claimed to have good antifilarial activity and less side effects. The present review summarizes some present treatment strategies and preliminary studies on herbal approaches of filariasis treatment, which can be investigated further to search of novel herbal drugs to treat filariasis.