Treatment of nonalcoholic and alcoholic fatty liver diseases by single natural drug and active natural products: research advances.

This paper reviews the recent research progress on the utilization of natural drugs against nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases(NAFLD)and alcoholic fatty liver diseases (AFLD). A total of 122 species of natural drugs, confined to the effective extracts of single herbal or animal drug and the active single natural products, were summarized and categorized as alkaloids,total flavonoids and total phenolics,single phenolics, terpenoids and steroids, total glycosides and total esters, amino acids and heterocycles, polysaccharides and proteoglycans, polypeptides/glycopeptides and poly-unsaturated fatty acids, coumarins and phenomens, single herbal drug, animal and fungus drugs. The future tendency of new natural drug research and development against NAFLD and AFLD is also discussed and some afforded suggestions were provided.