Research Article Medicinal Plants of the Australian Aboriginal Dharawal People Exhibiting Anti-Inflammatory Activity Most A. Akhtar, 1,2,3 Ritesh Raju, 1 Karren D. Beattie, 3 Frances Bodkin, 1 and Gerald Münch 1 1 Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia 2 Department of Pharmacy, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh 3 National Institute of Complementary Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Gerald M¨ unch; g.muench@westernsydney.edu.au Received 12 August 2016; Accepted 29 November 2016 Academic Editor: Genevieve Steiner Copyright © 2016 Most A. Akhtar et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Chronic infammation contributes to multiple ageing-related musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and infammatory bowel disease. More recently, chronic neuroinfammation has been attributed to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and autism-spectrum and obsessive-compulsive disorders. To date, pharmacotherapy of infammatory conditions is based mainly on nonsteroidal anti-infammatory drugs which in contrast to cytokine-suppressive anti-infammatory drugs do not infuence the production of cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor-  or nitric oxide. However, their prolonged use can cause gastrointestinal toxicity and promote adverse events such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and thrombosis. Hence, there is a critical need to develop novel and safer nonsteroidal anti-infammatory drugs possessing alternate mechanism of action. In this study, plants used by the Dharawal Aboriginal people in Australia for the treatment of infammatory conditions, for example, asthma, arthritis, rheumatism, fever, oedema, eye infammation, and infammation of bladder and related infammatory diseases, were evaluated for their anti-infammatory activity in vitro. Ethanolic extracts from 17 Eucalyptus spp. (Myrtaceae) were assessed for their capacity to inhibit nitric oxide and tumor necrosis factor- production in RAW 264.7 macrophages. Eucalyptus benthamii showed the most potent nitric oxide inhibitory efect (IC 50 5.57 ± 1.4 g/mL), whilst E. bosistoana, E. botryoides, E. saligna, E. smithii, E. umbra, and E. viminalis exhibited nitric oxide inhibition values between 7.58 and 19.77 g/mL. 1. Introduction Infammation is an important biological process and is essential to maintain the body’s homeostasis, to fght against pathogens efectively, and to repair the damaged tissue [1]. However when uncontrolled and chronic, infammation gives rise to a number of (ofen age related) diseases including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, infammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, and tendonitis. Furthermore, a chronic infammatory response with accompanying oxidative stress is a signifcant force driving the progression of peripheral diseases like atherosclerosis, diabetes, and metabolic syn- drome, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease [2–5]. While some chronic/remitting neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, have long been recognized as infammatory, the term “neuroinfammation” is now applied to chronic activation of microglia and astroglia that do not reproduce the classic characteristics of infammation in the periphery but may cause neurodegeneration [6–8]. Some examples of diseases characterized by neuroinfammation are Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease and even autism-spectrum and obsessive-compulsive disorders [9–12]. Microglial and astroglial activation, accompanied by increased levels of proinfammatory mediators such as TNF- , IL-1 and IL-6, prostaglandins, and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, as well as reactive carbonyl species and advanced glycation end products, is observed in the AD brain at all stages of the disease [13–18]. Genetic and phar- macoepidemiological studies also point to the importance of infammation in AD. For example, three immune-relevant genes were shown to be associated with an increased risk of Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2016, Article ID 2935403, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2935403