A comparative analysis of phytochemicals versus synthetic drugs/nanomedicines in the treatment of uterine fibroid: a systematic review

Most women experience uterine fibroids (UFs), a common benign gynecological tumor, at some point in their reproductive age. There are several pharmacological treatments available to shrink fibroids and lessen the UF symptoms. These medications cost a lot of money, though, and frequently have serious side effects. Therefore, due to their low cost, comparable and powerful therapeutic efficiency and lower side effects, phytochemical-based medications are gaining popularity in these days. This review's goal is to provide a summary of the knowledge that is currently unavailable regarding the mechanisms of the action of various phytochemical-based medications with anti-uterine fibroid efficacy. The present results showed that dietary phytocompounds (dehydroxyelephantopin, butein, capsaicin, fisetin, kaempferol, resveratrol, silibinin and curcumin) could probably be effective as therapeutic compounds for uterine leiomyoma. These phytochemicals indicated their capability to regulate main fibroid promoting and initiating events for instance, proliferation, inflammation, angiogenesis and fibrosis in various experimental setups through modulating various signaling pathways, such as Smad 2/3, PI3K/AKT/mTOR, ERK 1/2 and β-catenin indicating that they could serve as targets for prevention and/or treatment of UFs. This review provides key molecular insights for the development of phytochemical-based novel personalized therapy for non-surgical management of UFs which may help to avoid hysterectomy. Similar content being viewed by others

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This study was supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India (Grant No. CRG/2019/002237) and Incentive grant for faculty, IOE-BHU. Author information Authors and Affiliations Contributions SU contributed to conception, design, and drafting of the paper. VP contributed to design, and editing of the paper. AT, ANS, AR, AD, RG and PKD contributed to design, and editing of the paper. Corresponding author Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors Sonal Upadhyay, Vivek Pandey, Anima Tripathi, Alakh N. Sahu, Anjali Rani, Amita Diwakar, Lavina Chaubey, Rashmi Gupta, Pawan K. Dubey declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Ethical approval This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. Consent for publication All authors approved the final approval of manuscript. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. About this article Cite this article Upadhyay, S., Pandey, V., Tripathi, A. et al. A comparative analysis of phytochemicals versus synthetic drugs/nanomedicines in the treatment of uterine fibroid: a systematic review. Toxicol. Environ. Health Sci. 16, 21–36 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13530-023-00198-1 Accepted: Published: Version of record: Issue date: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13530-023-00198-1