An Overview on Naturally Occurring Phytoconstituent: Lithospermic Acid

Lithospermic acid is a phenylpropanoid oligomer isolated from an aqueous extract of dried roots of various Lamiaceae and Boraginaceae plants and used as a folk medicine to treat cardiovascular disease and to improve body functions. The manuscript has been written to provide valuable insights into naturally occurring phytocomponent, Lithospermic acid, and even explore its therapeutic potential. The data have been gathered from books and web sources, including Science Direct, Publons, Web of Science, and Scopus of the latest year. Lithospermic acid is a conjugate of rosmarinic and caffeic acid with a dihydro benzofuran nucleus and possesses a high antioxidant potential and prevents the production of superoxide radicals and lipid peroxidation and protects the tissue from deleterious effects of reactive oxygen species. In addition, it also possesses a wide range of pharmacological activities, including reducing atherosclerosis, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, anti-viral, HIV-1 integrase, and hyaluronidase inhibition, aldose reductase inhibition and improvement in uremic symptoms guanidino succinic acid level. Due to its anti-HIV activity, LA has gained much attention among the scientific community. Moreover, it is widely distributed to all the peripheral tissue in rats, and its metabolites undergo enterohepatic circulation and are excreted through biliary excretion. In this review, we concluded LA with its phytochemistry, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacological activities.