Medicinal Value of High-Altitude Plants of Indian Himalaya

Plants are the primary source of the therapeutic needs for mankind since ancient times and capable of growing under extreme conditions. The diversity in ecological growing conditions and also variability in altitude that ranges from 100 to 7500 m above the sea level introduce diverse kinds of medicinal plants in the higher altitude. In Indian Himalayan region, there are a number of medicinal plants growing wildly such as Aconitum heterophyllum, Hippophae rhamnoides, Inula racemosa, Rhodiola rosea, and Sinopodophyllum hexandrum. Aconitum heterophyllum has active alkaloids such as lycoctonine which shows significant activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella typhi. Analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities are significantly shown by some other alkaloids such as aconitine and mesaconitine derivatives. Inula racemosa contains a large amount of sesquiterpene lactones such as alantolactone and isoalantolactone and a large number of biological activities such as antimalarial, antifungal and hypoglcaemic and Sinopodophyllum hexandrum contains a variety of bioactive molecules such as flavonoids and lignans which possess antioxidant and antiapoptotic potential and hence help in radio-protection. The root of Rhodiola rosea contains more than 140 active constituents, and among them the two most potent are rosavin and salidroside. These constituents help in decreasing stress, improve brain function, reduce symptoms of depression etc. The adverse conditions in higher altitude is due to the presence of ultraviolet (UV) filters, potent antioxidants, free radical quenchers and antifreeze carbohydrates, and the plants growing in such habitat adapt themself to different mechanisms of metabolite synthesis. This is the major reason for the availability of diverse and unique chemical entities in the high-altitude plants. On the other hand, these processes are not shown by plants growing in low altitude. Their biochemical machinery has been able to bear the aggressive climatic conditions by the way of new biosynthetic twists leading to new molecular skeletal, which are absent in the lower region plants. High-altitude plants gain a lot of economic and medicinal importance. The amount and variety of chemical constituents present in high-altitude plants differ from plants growing in lower region, and this attracts researchers to investigate and explore their medicinal applications for human health care.