Natural Compounds as Integrative Therapy for Liver Protection against Inflammatory and Carcinogenic Mechanisms: From Induction to Molecular Biology Advancement

The liver is exposed to several harmful substances that bear the potential to cause excessive liver damage ranging from hepatitis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to extreme cases of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Liver ailments have been effectively treated from very old times with Chinese medicinal herbal formulations and later also applied by controlled trials in Japan. However, these traditional practices have been hardly well characterized in the past till in the last decades when more qualified studies have been carried out. Modern advances have given rise to specific molecular targets which are specifically good candidates for affecting the intricate mechanisms that play a role at the molecular level. These therapeutic regimens that mainly affect the progression of the disease by inhibiting the gene expression levels or by blocking essential molecular pathways or releasing cytokines may prove to play a vital role in minimizing the tissue damage. This review, therefore, tries to throw light upon the variation in the therapies for the treatment of benign and malignant liver disease from ancient times to the current date. Nonetheless, clinical research exploring the effectiveness of herbal medicines in the treatment of benign chronic liver diseases as well as prevention and treatment of HCC is still warranted.