Review on Borage (Valuable Medicinal Plant and the Richest Plant Source of Gamma Linolenic Acid)

Borage (Borago officinalis L.) is a valuable medicinal and culinary herb belonging to family Boraginaceae. The seed oil of borage is the richest plant source of gamma linolenic acid (GLA). GLA is commonly used as nutritional supplement and pharmaceutical prescription to control heart disease, diabetes, atopic eczema, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. Therefore borage is one of the important medicinal plants, which can play important roles in treatment of human diseases. For these reasons, recently, borage has been the subject of increasing agricultural interest. In this article we review the various aspects of borage including botanical characterizations, cultivation and production, medicinal uses in traditional medicine and clinical uses of it in relation with some clinical studies, etc.