PDMD: A Comprehensive Repository of Plants Reported for Skeletal Muscle-related Ailments

Medicinal plants and phytocompounds targeting skeletal muscle wasting in humans are under-represented in the majority of databases reporting plant/herb-diseases association. However, a large body of literature exists wherein plant extracts or active pharmaceutical ingredients thereof demonstrate potential benefit in skeletal muscle wasting diseases across model organisms. Underscoring the relevance of a repertoire documenting such medicinal plants, we introduce PDMD (Plants Database for Muscle Wasting Diseases), a manually curated plants database reported for muscle wasting diseases such as cachexia, sarcopenia, muscle atrophy, muscle frailty, impaired muscle regeneration, and muscle fatigue.

PDMD was developed through systematic manual collection and curation of published studies from PubMed, Science Direct, etc, retrieving literature on plants conferring pharmacological efficacy against muscle wasting across experimental model organisms. Phytochemical and taxonomic information were extracted via tools like ClassyFire, PubChem. To handle the storage of an annotated listing of plants, MS-Excel and MySQL were used. Frontend was designed in Visual Studio Code and HTML/CSS. An Apache/PHP server was used to integrate MS-Excel data and charts.

PDMD encompasses 206 medicinal plants, 230 API reported across 18 model organisms, offering taxonomical information, phytochemical classes, SMILES structure, geographical distribution, and other bioactivity indications. PDMD is cross-referenced with standard databases such as PubChem and PubMed for enhanced functionality. PDMD highlights overlooked plant-muscle links, bridging ethnopharmacology and botany gaps, and can aid hypothesis generation for novel therapies.

PDMD highlights overlooked plant-muscle links, bridging ethnopharmacology and botany gaps, and can aid hypothesis generation. PDMD is freely available at https://www.jiit.ac.in/biotechhighlightes/Research-Databases/PDMD/index.html, and was last updated in September 2025.