Abstract

Terrestrial Tribulus is an herbaceous plant originally from India. It has been widely used as a natural sexual stimulant by the traditional medicine of China, India and Greece. Tribulus is now widely used mainly by athletes based on the belief that it can increase testosterone concentrations. However, there is no consensus on the real effects of this supplementation, so the aim of this research was to characterize the effects of Tribulus in experimental models. This mini review was performed in the PubMed database on 04/13/2019 with the terms: “Terrestrial Tribulus”, “mice” and their related terms. Only studies in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian and French were included. In addition, all in vitro studies, studies that did not demonstrate in the methodology the use of Terrestrial Tribulus supplementation and studies that were not obtained in full were excluded. With this search strategy, 33 articles were identified, from which 18 studies were excluded based on the eligibility criteria. The results showed a protective effect on the male reproductive system, increased antioxidant agents and anti-inflammatory effect induced by supplementation of Terrestrial Tribulus.

Keywords: Tribulus Terrestris, Male reproductive system, Oxidative stress, Inflammation