Topical Oral Medicaments in Traditional Persian Medicine

Traditional, topically used oral medicaments are of great importance in the treatment of both oral and systemic diseases. Therefore, the aim of this study was to review the indications of various drug delivery forms and active ingredients of currently used medications in complementary medicine, as well as the results of recent research to find any possible conformity between their traditional and recent pharmaceutical properties.

In this review article, different resources including electronica databases, hand searching, the screening of reference lists and contacting experts were extensively performed, followed by categorizing the extracted data.

Based on the results, 6 drug forms were found in gaseous, liquid, and solid states with more than 70 formulations. Liquid and gaseous forms were mainly used to manage systemic conditions and solid forms were mainly applied for local treatments. In addition, the investigation of about 50 herbal components showed that the traditional therapeutic effects of the vast majority of the ingredients were in line with those of the recent studies. However, no clinical studies were found regarding the traditionally mentioned systemic effects after the topical use of this medicament in the form of gargles or mouthrinse.

In general, the side effects of oral and injectable drugs, as well as the specific advantages of oral mucosa in achieving the topical and systemic effects and the variety of the plant components of Iranian traditional oral medicament might have high potentials for finding new drugs and improving treatment strategies of some systemic diseases such as central nervous system diseases and depression.