Karma Yeshi

James Cook University | JCU · Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that seagrasses could possess potential applications in the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Five seagrass species (Zostera muelleri, Halodule uninervis, Cymodocea rotundata, Syringodium isoetifolium, and Thalassia hemprichii) from the Great Barrier Reef (QLD, Australia) were thus collected, and their prelimi...

The Australian Wet TropicsWorld Heritage Area (WTWHA) in northeast Queensland is home to approximately 18 percent of the nation’s total vascular plant species. Over the past century, human activity and industrial development have caused global climate changes, posing a severe and irreversible danger to the entire land-based ecosystem, and the WTWHA...

Bhutan's scholarly traditional medical system is called Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM). It was integrated with the modern healthcare system in 1967. Over 200 medicinal plants are used to produce more than 100 poly-ingredient medicinal formulations. Although BSM is supported by well-documented principles, pharmacopoeias, diagnostic procedures,...

Natural products (NPs) have played a vital role in human survival for millennia, particularly for their medicinal properties. Many traditional medicine practices continue to utilise crude plants and animal products for treating various diseases, including inflammation. In contrast, contemporary medicine focuses more on isolating drug-lead compounds...

Wet Tropics of Australia has unique biodiversity, and it is indeed home to more than 2800 vascular plants. It is also home to about 20 Aboriginal communities with vast traditional knowledge on wild food and medicinal plants. Many medicinal plants have been recorded from the tropical forests of Australia and few of them are endemic to Australia. The...

Introduction Helminths are parasitic worms that infect millions of people worldwide and secrete a variety of excretory-secretory products (ESPs), including proteins, peptides, and small molecules. Despite this, there is currently no comprehensive review article on cataloging small molecules from helminths, particularly focusing on the different cla...

Plants have been a vital source of natural antioxidants since ancient times. Plants growing under various abiotic stress conditions often produce more defensive secondary metabolites such as phenolics, flavonoids, and terpenoids during adaptation to the environment. Many of these secondary metabolites are known to possess antioxidant and anti-infla...

Parasitic helminths secrete and excrete a vast array of molecules known to help skew or suppress the host's immune response, thereby establishing a niche for sustained parasite maintenance. Indeed, the immunomodulatory potency of helminths is attributed mainly to excretory/secretory products (ESPs). The ESPs of helminths and the identified small mo...

Two new galloyl glucosides, galloyl-lawsoniaside A (4) and uromyrtoside (6), were isolated from the polar fraction of Uromyrtus metrosideros leaf extract along with another four previously identified phytochemicals (1, 2, 3, and 5). The structures of these six compounds were characterised using low and high-resolution mass spectrometry (L/HRMS) and...

Australian tropical plants have been a rich source of food (bush food) and medicine to the first Australians (Aboriginal people), who are believed to have lived for more than 50,000 years. Plants such as spreading sneezeweed (Centipeda minima), goat's foot (Ipomoea pes-caprae), and hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa and D. polyandra) are a few popular Abor...

Plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) are vital for human health and constitute the skeletal framework of many pharmaceutical drugs. Indeed, more than 25% of the existing drugs belong to PSMs. One of the continuing challenges for drug discovery and pharmaceutical industries is gaining access to natural products, including medicinal plants. This bottle...

Essential oils (EOs) are natural, aromatic, volatile, and complex mixture of compounds produced as liquid secondary metabolites by the plants. Besides their primary functions as protective and signaling molecules in the plants, EOs have been long exploited by humans for therapeutic purposes. So far, more than 3000 EOs are extracted from angiosperms...

Introduction BhutaneseSowa Rigpa Medicine (BSM) uses two species of Aconitum in 25 important multi-ingredient formulations. The formulations are used for treating chronic parasitic, microbial infections, inflammatory conditions, bilious fever, or high fever related to bile disorders, including colds and flu. Some Aconitum species are toxic, and the...

The floristic study along the Sherichhu River was carried out to determine the riparian plant species diversity and distribution pattern. A total of 34 study plots were laid on either side of the riverbank and recorded 72 woody species belonging to 52 families and 61 genera. Based on ocular inspections and topography, the areas were categorised int...

Bhutan is home to 5603 species of vascular plants under 220 families and 1415 genera. About 105 are endemic to the country. In this chapter, we will highlight the medicinal, nutritional, and spiritual uses of plants in Bhutan. One hundred three multi-ingredient essential traditional medicines and 15 commercial products use more than 229 plant speci...

Medical water therapy (also called medical hydrology) is practiced worldwide both for relaxation and treatment of diseases. While this practice is still thriving in Bhutan, there is a lack of proper documentation and critical study. Therefore, the current study reports on the water therapies practiced in Bhutan and their health benefits. We used fo...

Soil-transmitted helminths, including hookworms and whipworms, infect billions of people worldwide. Their capacity to penetrate and migrate through their hosts’ tissues is influenced by the suite of molecules produced by the infective developmental stages. To facilitate a better understanding of the immunobiology and pathogenicity of human hookworm...

Herbal medicines including the scholarly Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) contribute significantly to primary health care services and play a considerable part in modern drug discovery. BSM, which was integrated with modern health care system in 1967, currently uses more than 200 species of medicinal plants including three closely related member...

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic and lifelong disease characterized by gastrointestinal tract inflammation. It is caused by the interplay of the host's genetic predisposition and immune responses, and various environmental factors. Despite many treatment options, there is no cure for IBD. The increasing incidence and prevalence of IBD...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Geological materials, such as minerals, have a long history of usage as in- gredients in multicompound formulations of Himalayan Sowa Rigpa medicine – as well as in its localized form of Bhutanese traditional medicine (BTM) – for treating various disorders for over thousand years. Yet, hardly any scientific research...

Introduction: Many scientific studies have proven that intake of natural antioxidants lower the risks of developing several diseases due to free radicals in the human body, especially neurodegenerative disorders, cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Free radicals toxicity in our biological system could be subsided by only antioxidant compounds. Med...

Background The Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) uses medicinal plants as the bulk ingredients. Our study was to botanically identify subtropical medicinal plants from the Lower Kheng region in Bhutan, transcribe ethnopharmacological uses, and highlight reported pharmacological activities of each plant. Methods We freely listed the medicinal pla...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: The Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) uses animal parts in the preparation of numerous polyingredient traditional remedies. Our study reports the taxonomical identification of medicinal animals and the description of traditional uses in English medical terminologies. Aim of the study: To taxonomically identify t...

In this study, 71 species of edible medicinal plants belonging to 49 families were identified. These medicinal plants (beside therapeutic applications in Sowa Rigpa medicine) are used as food, fruit and vegetables in Bhutan. Five Himalayan medicinal plants were further studied for their phenolic content and antioxidant activity. Hypecoum leptocarpu...

In this work, total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activities in methanol and aqueous extracts of five-high altitude medicinal plants namely Aconogonon tortuosum, Thlaspi arvense, Erysimum bhutanicum, Thalictrum chelidonii and Aletris pauciflora were studied for the first time from Bhutan. Antioxidant activities were investigated u...