Abstract

Pain is an unpleasant feeling or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Even today, the control and treatment of pain remains one of the most challenging issues in medical world. An increased demand for phytotherapy and the availability of a variety of medicinal plants in Iran made it essential to study this subject. The challenges in the development of new analgesic drugs has also drawn attention towards this subject. To conduct this review, the terms medicinal plant, extracts, essential oils, traditional medicine, pain, acute pain, and chronic pain were used to retrieve relevant publications from the citation databases Magiran, SID, Google Scholar and Scopus. The subject related articles were retrieved and irrelevant articles were excluded. Based on the results, the medicinal plants such as Lavandula officinalis, Scrophularia striata, Vitis vinifera, Matricaria recutita, Solanum melongena L., Hyoscyamus niger, Achillea millefolium, Propolis, Vitex agnus castus, Malva Parviflora, Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Artemisia herba alba, Elaeagnus angustifolia. L, Anethum graveolens, Phoenix dactylifera, Hypericum perforatum L, Ziziphora cliniopodiodes, Lactuca sativa longifolia and Tanacetum parthenium etc. are among the most important analgesic plants. The medicinal plants and their active ingredients can be used to produce analgesic drugs and products. The anti-nociceptive effects of these herbs and their potential effects through inflammatory processes, inhibition of the release of arachidonic acid, synthesis of prostaglandins and its effect on the opioid system, with peripheral anti-nociceptive mechanism and cholinergic pathways, stimulation of GABA A receptors, COX-1 and 5- LO and central and environmental mechanisms.