Habbe-Gul-e-Aakh (HGA) is an important pharmacopoeal drug of Unani medicine commonly used in a number of inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and gout etc. It contains four ingredients of plant origin drugs. All the ingredients have been evaluated individually and shown to possess analgesic, anti-inflammatory and related effects. HGA as such has also been studied on experimental models of acute, sub-acute and chronic inflammation and reported to be safe and effective anti-inflammatory agent. However, its mechanism of anti- inflammatory effect has not been studied so far. Therefore, in the present study HGA was evaluated experimentally to detect its possible mechanism of action.

The study was carried out by inoculating the potent chemical mediators like Serotonin (5-HT), Bradykinin, Histamine and PGE1, directly in albino rats by subplantar injection to cause edema. The animals were treated with 1000 mg/kg of 50% hydroalcoholic extract of HGA one hour before injecting the edemagen. HGA produced 28.0% (p<0.02) inhibition against 5-HT and 41.01% (P=0.001) against PGE1. Although HGA inhibit the Histamine and Bradykinin induced inflammation also but the inhibition was found non-significant (16.30% and 3.30% respectively). It may be concluded therefore that HGA mainly acts by its anti-5HT and anti-PGE1 activity.