GENUS FAGONIA MEDIATED NANOPARTICLES AND THEIR THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL: A REVIEW

Medicinal plants have remained a major focus for scientists for thousands of years. The main reason for the importance of medicinal plants is the presence of different bioactive compounds such as flavonoids, saponins, terpenoids, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides etc. These bioactive compounds play important role in treating diseases like cardiac glycosides used to treat heart problems etc. In recent years with the development of nanotechnology, medicinal plants are now used to synthesize nanoparticles using different metallic salts. The main advantage of nanoparticles is their small size which helps them to enter the cell. Genus Fagonia of the family Zygophyllaceae has high therapeutic potential. In the traditional medicinal system, various diseases like fever, blood purification, and cancer have been treated using different species of the genus Fagonia. Many peer-reviewed articles have been published on nanoparticle synthesis from different species of Fagonia by using different metallic salts like silver nitrate, zinc oxide, gold, and manganese oxide. These nanoparticles have been checked for biological and pharmacological activities like antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-diabetic, anticancer, and antileishmanial activity. To our knowledge, the current paper presents a review for the first time of Fagonia mediated nanoparticles, their types, properties, and applications in the environmental field.