Medicinal Plants Against

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a gram-negative bacillus that infects half of the world’s population at some point in life. Various studies have shown that the interaction of H. pylori with gastric epithelial cells causes changes in gene expression. However, these studies have been conducted in adult populations with persistent and symptomatic H. pylori infection or defined gastric cancer. This current and comprehensive review provides relevant information on some medicinal plants for H. pylori treatment. The search was made using relevant and updated scientific articles published in the last 10 years (2010-2021), reflecting the information related to H. pylori and medicinal plants. We used databases such as Elsevier, ScienceDirect, NCBI, Springer in bibliographic and editorial collections such as MDPI, Taylor & Francis, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., and the use of the Google Scholar search engine. Keywords including “Medicinal plants”, “anti-Helicobacter pylori”, “Helicobacter pylori”, “Ecuador”, “active compounds”, and “action mechanism” were used in the search. The search generated 2,626 results in total, of which abstracts, bibliographic review articles, and experimental articles were reviewed, identifying 25 potentially relevant articles for the investigation. In addition, the reference lists of the identified articles were reviewed, leading to 17 more articles. Phyllanthus niruri L., known as Chancapiedra, is an Ecuadorian species used for H. pylori treatment. Other plants with such activity include Casuarina equisetifolia L, Terminalia catappa L., Bryophyllum pinnatum, Calotropis procera, Ageratum conyzoides and Eryngium foetidium. This chapter provides a review to understand the medicinal plants used as H. pylori treatment and the biological mechanism.