Editorial

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a kind of chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease of joints that results in joint pain, swelling and destruction. It affects an estimated 1% of the adult population throughout the world. RA progresses in three stages first stage is the swelling of synovial lining causing pain, warmth, stiffness, redness and swelling around the joints, second is the rapid division and growth of cells or pannus which causes the synovia to thicken, in the third stage the inflamed cells releases enzyme that may digest bone and cartilage, often causing the involved joint to lose its shape and alignment resulting pain and loss of movement.

Although a number of drugs (non-steroidal or steroidal antiinflammatory agents and immune-suppressants used in the treatment of RA have been developed over the past few decades, there is still an urgent need for more effective drugs with lower side effects. The use of medicinal herb in the treatment and prevention of diseases is attracting attention by scientists worldwide. This is corroborated by World Health Organization in its quest to bring primary health care to the people. The plant kingdom has long serve as a prolific source of useful drugs, food, additives, flavouring agents, colorants, binders and lubricants. As a matter of fact, it has been estimated that about 25% of all prescribed medicines toady are substances derived from plants. The use of traditional medicine and medicinal plants in most developing countries, as a normative basis for the maintenance of good health, has been widely observed.

Medicinal plants play a key role in health care in man and many plants are claimed to possess ant arthritic activity. The adjuvant arthritic model represents a systemic inflammatory disease with common patho-logical features like joint swelling associated with cellular and pannus invasion of the joint space and bone desorption in rats as RA in human. Strong bone loss after intense arthritis is induced when adjuvant is injected into the footpad. Crateva religiosa hook & frost belonging to family Capparidaceae (cappaceae) is a tree usually found in the vicinity of temples of central and eastern India. It is popularly known as pasugandha in Sanskrit, three legs capper in English, varuna in hindi Ethanomedically the plant used as diuretic, laxative, lethinotriptic, antirheumatic, tonic antiperiodic etc. In folklore the bark is specially used in urinary disorders including kidney and bladder stone, caliculi effection, anti-emeticetc.

The present study is an attempt to give a scientific proof for the use of this plant against inflammatory washed with tap water to remove the soil and dirt particles and then shad dried. The dried plant materials were milled into coarse powder by a mechanical grinder and sieved in sieve 20. The course powder was extracted successively using soxhlet apparatus with Ethanol (95%) and water for 72 hour. The extracts were concentrated by distilling off the solvent under reduced pressure and kept inside desiccators. The percentage of yield was calculated separately for each extract with respect to the air dried weight.