Speaker Biography

Fatma Tugce Guragac
Biography:

Fatma Tugce Guragac received her B.S. Degree from Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University, Turkey and she continues to PhD studies with Professor Esra Akkol on the Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University. Her research combines pharmacognosy and pharmacological approaches to focus on antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, antinociceptive and wound healing activies of different compounds isolated from plants used in folk medicine.

Abstract:

Rheumatism is a systemic inflammatory disease which related with a number of painful conditions of joints, tendons, ligaments, bones and muscles. People all over the world suffer from the pain and disability caused by this disease. There is no panacea for rheumatism, that’s why, it is included in the group of chronic incurable diseases. The purpose of the current treatment is controlling the pain and reducing the inflammation.  Several potential drugs such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, methotrexate, and cyclosporine are being tested but none of them has been found safe; all are known to cause certain side-effects. Traditional medicines are large scale sources for the discovery of original drugs. Dracunculus vulgaris Schott (Araceae) is used in traditional Turkish medicine against rheumatic pain. This study was designed to evaluate this folkloric usage of D. vulgaris. Petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and methanol extracts were prepared from the roots of this plant, successively. Carrageenan, prostaglandin E2 and serotonin-induced hind-paw edema, acetic acid-induced capillary permeability and 12-O-tetradecanoyl-phorbol-13-acetate (TPA)-induced mouse ear edema models were used to appraise anti-inflammatory activity of the extracts. Antinociceptive activity was tested using a p-benzoquinone induced abdominal constriction test. According to our results, methanol extract showed the highest activity when compared to n-hexane and ethyl acetate extracts in test models. In further studies, it has been planned to perform phytochemical studies on methanol extract of this plant to reveal active constituents.