Currently anxiety and depression are the fourth leading cause of morbidity. Anxiety is the most common mental disorder from which 20% of the adult population suffer worldwide and has become a significant research area in the field of psychopharmacology (Yadav et al., 2008; Sharmen et al., 2014). Anxiety is also associated with significant disability resulting in negative impacts on the patient’s quality of life (Kudagi et al., 2012). Currently, Benzodiazepines are used as the drug of choice for the treatment of several types of anxiety disorders (Gupta et al., 2010). Despite the fact that BZPs have known advantages but their side effects are high including sedation, myorelexation, physical dependence and anterograde amnesia (Barua et al., 2009) which has limited their use.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is also one of the most common psychiatric disorders, posing serious public health problem (Kessler et al., 2005). According to WHO, the prevalence of depression is approximately 4.5% globally with almost 325 million people suffering from it (WHO, 2017). The classical antidepressant drugs available on the market for treating depression include tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs. Although these drugs are effective in treating patients with depression, however there are still almost 50% of patients who are resistant to the first line conventional antidepressant drugs. Additionally, these drugs require almost 3–4 weeks before showing therapeutic outcome (Browne and Lucki, 2013). Furthermore, the classical antidepressant drugs are associated with serious side effects such as sedation, dry mouth, restlessness, muscle spasms, nausea, constipation, profuse sweating, sexual disorders, obesity, confusion, and increased suicidal thoughts over a prolong period of time (Schosser et al., 2012; Bet et al., 2013). This burden is especially high in many low and middle income countries.
In the last few decades have seen a significant rise in the use of natural remedies to treat various ailments including depression and anxiety. These products are perceived as safer alternatives to pharmacotherapy, with lower risk of adverse effects or withdrawal. Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to discover substances from natural sources particularly plants which can help prevent these serious mental disorders. Natural products are small molecules present in divergent natural sources. They are considered to possess one of the most coveted positions in the treatment of all human disorders including anxiety and depression. They are considered to be the most important source of novel drug leads (Nasri et al., 2014). The importance of plant derived natural products for the treatment of anxiety and depression is evident from the fact that many herbal remedies have been reported (Sarris et al., 2013; Farah et al., 2016). Thus, due to an increasing interest, herbal medicines coupled with the use of emerging genetic technologies “herbomics,” are potential areas of future research.
In view of the above, there is a dire need for the discovery and development of novel antidepressant agents acting via different mechanisms that may provide quick onset of action for relieving anxiety and depression symptomatology. Furthermore the newer agents may prevent the aforementioned adverse effects and provide effective treatment to the non-responsive patients to the conventional drugs.
This Research Topic focuses on original contributions for natural products being useful in various mental disorders particularly anxiety and their possible mechanisms of action.
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Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all authors for their valuable contributions to this Research Topic. We are also thankful to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions and constructive comments to improve the quality of published manuscripts. We are also grateful to Frontiers in Pharmacology for inviting to edit this Research Topic.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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Summary
Keywords
natural products, depression, major depressive disorder (DEP), monoamine oxidase (MAO), herbomics
Citation
Khan A, Khan H, Maione F and Karim N (2022) Editorial: Natural products as an emerging therapeutic alternative for the treatment of anxiety and depression, Volume II. Front. Pharmacol. 13:1078548. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2022.1078548
Received
24 October 2022
Accepted
06 December 2022
Published
14 December 2022
Volume
13 - 2022
Edited by
Javier Echeverria, University of Santiago, Chile
Reviewed by
Chun Yang, Nanjing Medical University, China
Suresh Kumar, Punjabi University, India
Updates
Copyright
© 2022 Khan, Khan, Maione and Karim.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ajmal Khan, ajmalchemist@yahoo.com
This article was submitted to Ethnopharmacology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.