BHUx: a patented polyherbal formulation to prevent hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis

Since hyperlipidemia, inflammation and obesity are closely related to atherosclerosis, therefore management of these factors together would be beneficial for overall treatment approach for atherosclerosis. Although, Indian system of medicine, especially Ayurveda has several medicinal plants with proven beneficial claims towards these pathological conditions, but most of them lack enough experimental data. BHUx is a novel polyherbal formulation, consisting of 5 medicinal plants namely Termenalia arjuna, Strychnox nux vomica, Boswellia serrata, Commiphora mukul, and Semecarpus anacardium, which have history of clinical use as single or in other combinations, but these plant fractions were never tried collectively in this ratio as in BHUx, which has been found to be effective on all the etiological factors, together. In this paper, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hypo-lipidemic, anti-proliferative properties of BHUx have been studied on several experimental models based on chemical tests, cell culture, in vitro models, and in vivo experiments with normal and transgenic animals. A separate pre-clinical toxicity study has also been carried out to prove its safety margin in therapeutic doses. Further, clinical trail of BHUx is under way, before it comes to market for public use as functional food to maintain healthy heart. This article also review some patent related to the field.