Therapeutic potential of medicinal plants for the management of scabies

Sarcoptes scabiei (S. scabiei), a parasite mite which causes scabies disease resulting in serious public health concern. The long-term scabies disease can lead to complications such as septicemia, acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis, heart disease, and secondary infections. Timely treatment to the affected patients is required to control the disease and get rid of the causative agent. Delayed diagnosis and inappropriate treatment can lead to serious consequences. The most common treatment strategy is the use of allopathic medicines which can immediately relieve the patient but have the drawback of side effects. The safe and cost-effective alternative treatment strategy is the use of medicinal plants which have beneficial therapeutic potential against variety of diseases due to the presence of many bioactive phytoconstituents with no or minimal side effects. For the present review, the published articles describing scabies disease and its phytotherapeutic modalities were searched through different data bases including Google Scholar, PubMed, Medline, and ScienceDirect using the keywords like S. scabiei, prevalence of scabies disease, and phytotherapy of scabies. A large number of medicinal plants, such as Melaleuca alternifolia, Curcuma longa, Azadirachta indica, Rosmarinus officinalis, Capsicum annuum, Cinnamomum camphor, Solanum nigrum, and Eupatorium perfoliatum, have been reviewed for the promising future treatments of scabies. All the studied plants have many bioactive compounds with potential therapeutic effects against scabies and can be utilized for therapeutic purposes for this disease. This literature study has limitations because of the lack of sufficient data due to limited pre-clinical trials in this particular area. This review provides a baseline to explore the therapeutic potential of these medicinal plants against skin diseases. However, extensive studies are required to identify, authenticate, and characterize the bioactive compounds present in these plants which may lead to value addition in pharmaceutical industries providing the cost-effective way of treatment with minimal side effects.