ABSTRACT
The “Asclepiads” name was bestowed upon a genus Asclepias and was given in honor of Aesculpius or Asklepios whose priests or fabled decedents were known as the god or medicine in the ancient Greek. This group of plants is commonly called “milkweeds” and the respective family Asclepiadaceae, which is now merged with Apocynaceae. Almost all the plants have possessed milky or watery sap in the plant body and have acrid, emetic, purgative, and diaphoretic properties (Karale and Karale, 2017). In traditional medicine, the Asclepiads in the Asia-Pacific region are used to treat fever, malaria, inflammation, diabetes, and gastrointestinal ailments, including skin and ectoparasitic diseases (Wart, 2006). Asclepiads are a medicinally significant plant group, as they contain different kinds of secondary metabolites. Glycosides (steroidal and pregnane) and flavonoids are the major compounds reported in these plants that can be used as alternative medicine for many ailments (Harborne, 1984).
