An overview of multi-ingredient kidney stone dissolving formulations from Traditional Persian Pharmacy

Kidney stone as a third important disease of the urinary tract is a common disease affecting 10-15% of the world population. Effective medical treatment for the disease is not yet well established. On the other hand, there is an increasing global demand to manage and control various diseases with natural medicine and medicaments originating from Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Traditional Persian Medicine (TPM) is one of the most popular schools in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. There are numerous natural and clinical interventions for kidney stones, reported in TPM medical and pharmaceutical manuscripts. This review provides various related compound formulations for kidney stones from the standpoints of Persian scholars. These remedies have been cited in a series of traditional pharmaceutical manuscripts of Persian medicine, namely Qarābādin or prescription. With a view to the positive pharmacological or biological activities of the constituents of filtered formulations, many of those can be re-formulated and either experimentally or clinically evaluated to be introduced as new natural remedies in this field.