Role of Herbal Drugs in Wound Healing Mechanisms

Wound healing is a complex and dynamic biological process and involves hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling of tissues that can be impaired by factors like infection, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation. Surveying herbal drugs, which have been reported to be high in bioactive phytoconstituents such as flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, tannins and phenolic drugs, have become effective in wound repair acceleration. Preclinical animal models suggest that Curcuma longa, Ocimum sanctum, Centella asiatica and Azadirachta indica extracts have significant effect on wound contraction, collagen deposition, angiogenesis, fibroblast proliferation and general tissue regeneration and decreasing oxidative damage, inflammation and microbial burden. The combination of such multifaceted microenvironmental biological activities results in a supportive microenvironment that promotes quicker and more effective wound healing, which is why they may be evaluated as cost-effective, biocompatible, and culturally acceptable alternatives or complements to traditional synthetic therapeutics. Although showing good preclinical outcomes, there are still issues of standardization of the extraction processes, doses and formulations as well as scanty clinical confirmation in humans. Such studies should be backed up by future studies in which rigorous clinical trials and molecular level mechanistic studies are performed with optimization of the delivery systems to convert these studies into safe, effective, and standard therapeutic modalities in modern wound management.