Protective Effect of Natural Products against Chemotherapy-Induced Cardiotoxicity: A Review

Background: Cancer is one of the diseases with high mortality rate recorded each year across the world. Its mainstay treatment is chemotherapy although they are largely toxic, causing severe adverse reactions including cardiotoxicity, nephrotoxicity and genotoxicity. Cardiotoxicity is unique to certain chemotherapeutic agents and occur via several mechanisms. It has been hypothesized that co-administration of natural products which may be cardioprotectant, together with chemotherapy can alleviate cardiotoxicity-induced by chemotherapy. Objectives: This review aimed to provide a brief information about the protective effect of natural products against chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity Methods: To complete this review, relevant literatures were searched from several scientific databases including Google, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science and Pubmed. Results: In this paper, we have reviewed ten natural products (curcumin, mangiferin, naringenin, quercetin, 6-gingerol, lycopene, resveratrol, apigenin, proanthocyanidins and indole-3-carbinol), which have major influences in attenuating chemotherapy-drug induced cardiotoxicity. Apart from the cardioprotective effects, they tend to confer some synergistic effects with chemotherapeutic agents and therefore have the potential to be used as an adjunct. Conclusion: Though a panel of natural products demonstrate protective effects against cardiotoxicity in cells and animal models, their therapeutic potentials for clinical needs further investigation.