Cardiovascular disorders are the most important reason of mortality all over
the world. Atherosclerosis is the inflammation of the blood vessels, especially large
muscular arteries, which is caused by a series of pathological conditions including
hyperlipidemia, hypertension, some types of infection and diabetes mellitus. Despite
the available chemical drugs to manage the disease, researchers are widely working on
other approaches like herbal medicine for the management of atherosclerosis. Alone or
as complementary therapy with chemical drugs, medicinal plants have shown
beneficial effects for primary or secondary prevention of cardiovascular problems. In
this chapter, we firstly introduce herbal remedies traditionally used for the treatment of
atherosclerosis-associated disorders in ethnomedicine of different nations throughout
the world, and then we discuss clinical evidence on the most relevant medicinal plants
as well as the isolated phytochemicals used for the management of atherosclerosis.
Keywords: Atherosclerosis, Clinical Trial, Endothelial Dysfunction, Ethnopharmacology,
Herbal Medicine, Hypercholesterolemia, Hyperlipidemia, Hypertension,
Meta-Analysis, Medicinal Plant, Phytochemical, Type II Diabetes.
