KARACHI: Around 80 per cent of people worldwide rely on herbal medicinal products for primary healthcare.

Some plants have therapeutic potential in various diseases like Alzheimer.

Tea plays important role in health and nutrition areas and considerably modulate taste feelings.

Garlic has a number of beneficial properties for human health.

Garlic possess anticancer and antioxidant activity.

These views were expressed by national and foreign scientists on Friday while speaking at the second day of the four-day international conference entitled `the 14th Eurasia Conference on Chemical Sciences (EuAsC2S-14)', being held from December 15 to 18 at the HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi.

Giving his invited lecture, Prof. Dr. Anwar-ul-Hasan Gilani, Chairman Pakistan Council for Science and Technology, said that currently many pharmacological classes of drugs include a natural product prototype, which includes aspirin, morphine, quinine, reserprine, vincristine etc.

The use of herbal medicinal products and supplements has increased tremendously over the time, he said and added that some plants have therapeutic potential in various diseases like Alzheimer.

However, there is sufficient room in therapeutics for newer drugs with better efficacy and safety profile, he said.

Prof. Dr. Nessar Ahmed (United Kingdom) said that garlic has a number of beneficial properties and reported to possess hepatoprotective, anticarcinogenic and antioxidant activity.

Aged garlic extract protects against a number of disease processes and its ability to protect against doxorubicin-induced toxicity is a major area of investigation in our laboratory, he said, adding that aged garlic extract deserves more attention as it may have therapeutic potential and protect cancer patients from doxorubicin-induced cardio toxicity.

Prof. Dr. Erick J. Dufourc (France), in his plenary lecture, said that Tannins and polyphenols are compounds found in wine and tea, which play important role in health and nutrition areas and considerably modulate taste feelings.

He said that such compounds are also strong antioxidants and prevent lipid oxidation by localization at cell membrane interfaces.

Prof. Dr. Micheal Duszenko (Germany), Prof. Dr. Bruno Figadere (France), Prof. Dr. Tong-Bu Lu (China) and Prof. Dr. Macello Iriti (Italy) also delivered their plenary lectures; many scientists delivered invited lectures on different issues.

Over 740 scientists, including 150 foreign researchers from around 45 countries are participating in this Eurasia conference, making it one of the largest science conferences in Pakistan in recent years.—APP