Affiliations 

  • 1 Medical Ethics and Law Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 88777539, Iran. [email protected]
  • 2 Department of Biology, Science Faculty, Erciyes University, Kayseri 38039, Turkey. [email protected]
  • 3 Institute of Fermentation Technology and Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Science, Lodz University of Technology, Wolczanska 171/173, 90-924 Lodz, Poland. [email protected]
  • 4 Institute of Fermentation Technology and Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Science, Lodz University of Technology, Wolczanska 171/173, 90-924 Lodz, Poland. [email protected]
  • 5 Institute of Fermentation Technology and Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Science, Lodz University of Technology, Wolczanska 171/173, 90-924 Lodz, Poland. [email protected]
  • 6 Department of Medical Parasitology, Zabol University of Medical Sciences, Zabol 61663-335, Iran. [email protected]
  • 7 Research Centre for Applied Science and Technology (RECAST), Tribhuvan University, P.O. Box 1030 Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal. [email protected]
  • 8 Antimicrobial and Biocontrol Agents Unit, Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Yaounde 1, Ngoa Ekelle, Annex Fac. Sci, P.O. Box 812 Yaounde, Cameroon. [email protected]
  • 9 Department of Botany, Lahore College for Women University, Jail Road Lahore 54000, Pakistan. [email protected]
  • 10 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Malaysia. [email protected]
  • 11 Department of Biomedical, Surgical and Dental Sciences, Milan State University, via Beldiletto 1/3, 20100 Milan, Italy. [email protected]
  • 12 Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Avicenna Tajik State Medical University, Rudaki 139, Dushanbe 734003, Tajikistan. [email protected]
  • 13 Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Alameda Prof. Hernâni Monteiro, 4200-319 Porto, Portugal. [email protected]
  • 14 National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology, via G. Giusti 9, 50121 Firenze, Italy. [email protected]
  • 15 Phytochemistry Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 11369, Iran. [email protected]
Int J Mol Sci, 2018 Sep 19;19(9).
PMID: 30235891 DOI: 10.3390/ijms19092843

Abstract

Aloe genus plants, distributed in Old World, are widely known and have been used for centuries as topical and oral therapeutic agents due to their health, beauty, medicinal, and skin care properties. Among the well-investigated Aloe species are A. arborescens, A. barbadensis, A. ferox, and A. vera. Today, they account among the most economically important medicinal plants and are commonly used in primary health treatment, where they play a pivotal role in the treatment of various types of diseases via the modulation of biochemical and molecular pathways, besides being a rich source of valuable phytochemicals. In the present review, we summarized the recent advances in botany, phytochemical composition, ethnobotanical uses, food preservation, and the preclinical and clinical efficacy of Aloe plants. These data will be helpful to provide future directions for the industrial and medicinal use of Aloe plants.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.