ReviewFrontiers in pharmacology2026
Ethnopharmacological relevance of Chinese medicinal materials and natural products in epilepsy: a critical multi-target review integrating neurons, glia and inflammatory signaling.
Review in Frontiers in pharmacology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures, substantial comorbidity, and persistent pharmacoresistance in approximately one-third of affected patients. Chinese medicinal materials, including botanical drugs, selected animal-derived medicinal materials, extracts, and defined natural metabolites, have long been used as adjunctive approaches for seizure-related disorders; however, their modern pharmacological evidence remains heterogeneous and is often interpreted too broadly. This critical review synthesizes experimental, clinical, and translational evidence on 15 representative Chinese medicinal materials or natural metabolites that have been investigated in epilepsy-related models. Using a structured narrative search and an evidence-appraisal framework, we map these materials to neuronal excitability, hippocampal and entorhinal vulnerability, dentate-gyrus remodeling, microglial activation, astrocyte dysfunction, neurotransmitter balance, ion-channel regulation, and inflammatory signaling pathways including MAPK, mTOR, PI3K/AKT/FoxO1, TLR4/NF-κB, Nrf2/HO-1, and CREB. We distinguish acute seizure suppression, neuroprotection after status epilepticus, and true anti-epileptogenic or disease-modifying effects. Overall, preclinical data support multi-target biological plausibility, particularly for regulation of neuroinflammation and neuron-glia homeostasis, but most evidence remains limited by acute chemoconvulsant models, pre-treatment designs, incomplete botanical or chemical characterization, variable dose reporting, and limited high-quality clinical validation. Future studies should prioritize taxonomically validated materials, chemically characterized preparations, clinically relevant chronic seizure models, standardized outcomes, pharmacokinetic and herb-drug interaction testing, and rigorously designed randomized trials.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.