A REVIEW ON THE MEDICINAL PLANT ECHINOPS RITRO SPECIES: PHYTOCHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY

The purpose of this review is to critically evaluate the available research reports on the Echinops ritro species and systematize the results obtained. This species is distributed in northern and tropical Africa, the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia. Echinops ritro has traditionally been used as medicine, mainly in China, Eastern Europe and Asia. This species contains more than 37 secondary metabolites of the species have been reported, the largest proportion of which are thiophene compounds. Phenolic compounds, flavonoids, alkaloids and lipids are also reported. Based on the discovered pharmacological and biological properties, antioxidant, antimicrobial, hepatoprotective and antitermite properties were determined. However, this species is claimed to have a wider traditional medicinal use, but its biological effect is not fully understood. Information for this study was obtained using various databases, including Scopus, Clarivate, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar. The use of Echinops ritro in the pharmaceutical industry will help in the development of new drugs with a wide range of therapeutic activities.