Glycyrrhiza glabra : Medicine over the millennium

Abstract

Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn. is an age-old plant used in traditional medicine across the globe for its ethnopharmacological values to cure varieties of ailments from simple cough to hepatitis to more complex like SARS and cancer. The present paper is an effort to highlight the role of a few major constituents of this plant, which have multifaceted pharmacological actions and could be used as templates for designing new pharmacophores using modern chemical and bioanalytical tools.