Neuroprotective Effect of Natural Products on Peripheral Nerve Degeneration: A Systematic Review

Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is a serious public health problem that is linked with motor, sensory and autonomic deficits. Given the fact that this type of disorder leads to a decreased quality of life in most patients and adherence of available drugs is limited and have adverse effects, we investigated the efficacy of natural products in a PNI model. The search terms plants, medicinal, nerve regeneration, nerve crush, sciatic nerve as well as MeSH terms or free-text words were used to retrieve English language articles in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and LILACS published until July 2015. After sciatic nerve crush, natural products have improved significantly motor performance, sensory function and electrical conductance measured over weeks. Among the pharmacological targets suggested by the action of natural products, there were citations on the activation of the antiapoptotic signaling pathway, modulation in the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and neurotrophic factors. The systematic review provides scientific evidence that natural products are pharmacologically effective in the treatment of PNI such as sciatic nerve crush.