Yellow Himalayan Raspberry (Rubus ellipticus Sm.): Ethnomedicinal, Nutraceutical, and Pharmacological Aspects

TL;DR

This review compiles ethnomedicinal, nutritional, phytochemical, and pharmacological evidence for yellow Himalayan raspberry (*Rubus ellipticus* Sm.), a wild fruit used as food and traditional medicine. It reports diverse bioactive constituents and multiple bioactivities supporting nutraceutical potential, while calling for more standardized, mechanistic, and safety-focused research.

Key findings

• The fruit is reported as rich in macronutrients, micronutrients, and minerals, with phytochemical values including total phenol content of 343.75 ± 2.21 µg GAE/mg, total flavonoid content of 433.5 ± 13.39 mg CE/100 g, total anthocyanin content of 1.71 ± 0.08 CGE/100 g, and total tannin content of 628.32 ± 3.17 mg TAE/g in *R. ellipticus*.
• Reported bioactive compounds include ascorbic acid, kaempferol, gallic acid, catechin, quercetin, rutin, ellagic acid, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, euscaphic acid, β-sitosterol, and β-carotene; ascorbic acid was reported at 19.80 mg/100 g fresh weight and β-carotene at 0.99 mg/100 g fresh weight.
• Antioxidant activity was reported with fruit extract DPPH IC50 = 32.8 ± 0.5 µg/mL, FRAP = 73.1 ± 0.5 µM Fe2+ equivalent, and ABTS IC50 = 39.2 ± 1.1 µg/mL; methanolic leaf extract DPPH IC50 was 6.96 ± 2.32 µg/mL, comparable to BHA, BHT, and quercetin. Antidiabetic data include euscaphic acid α-glucosidase IC50 = 0.65 ± 0.09 mM versus acarbose 0.82 ± 0.11 mM, and methanolic leaf α-amylase IC50 = 269.94 ± 0.11 µg/mL.
• Other reported activities include antimalarial (leaf extract IC50 = 14.26 μg/mL against *Plasmodium falciparum* INDO strain and 64% inhibition against *P. berghei* at 500 mg/kg), anti-inflammatory (66.47% and 45.78% paw edema reduction at 400 and 200 mg/kg), anticancer/antiproliferative, nephroprotective, antipyretic, anticonvulsant, antimicrobial, wound healing, and photocatalytic dye degradation.

Methods

• Narrative review using more than 100 research publications as the primary data source, including original research articles, review papers, books, book chapters, reports, and short communications.
• Literature searched through Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science using keywords such as ethnomedicinal uses, in vitro and in vivo studies, chemical constituents, nutritional importance, and pharmacological properties of *R. ellipticus*.
• The authors extracted and summarized ethnomedicinal uses, bioactive chemical constituents, nutritional composition, and reported pharmacological activities; no systematic review protocol, meta-analysis, or primary experimental study is described.

Limitations

• Stated: the authors call for detailed research including focused bioactivity studies, standardization of fruits from different climatic conditions, advanced toxicological, pharmacological, and pharmacokinetic evaluations, mechanism studies in animal and human subjects, and cultivation optimization for sustainable use.
• Stated: nutritional composition, total phytochemical content, and isolated compounds vary based on environmental factors, ripening stage, processing after collection, extraction solvents and methods, and analysis methods.
• Evident: as a narrative review, it synthesizes heterogeneous studies using different extracts, doses, and in vitro/in vivo models rather than generating new data, so clinical efficacy, safety, and causal mechanisms in humans remain unestablished.