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Introduction
According to the recent statistics by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the total population of camels in the world is estimated to be about 20 million, with Somalia having the largest herd worldwide (FAO, 2008). Camels live in the vast pastoral areas in Africa and Asia and divided into two different species belonging to the genus Camelus. Dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius, one humped) that mainly live in t he desert areas (arid), and Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus, two - humped) which prefer living in the cooler areas. The Bactrian species is domesticated in the East to the Northern China and in the West to Asia Minor and Southern Russia, including Mongoli a and Kazakhstan (Farah, 1996; Yagil, 1982). On the other hand, the d romedary species widely occurs in the Middle East, North and East Africa, South West Asia and Australia. The Australian camels are mostly imported from Arabia; it is estimated that up to 20,000 camels were brought to t he Australian arid between 1880 and 1907 (Northern Territory Government, 2007). The total population of the d romedary species (domestic) worldwide is estimated to be about 15 million head (Mukasa - Mugerwa, 1981) and will be the subject of this review. Camels are considered to be a good source of milk and meat, and are used for other purposes such as transportation and sport racing. Camel milk has an important role in human nutrition in the hot regions and arid countries. This milk contains all the essential nutrients found in bovine milk (El - Agamy, Abou - Shloue, & Abdel - Kader, 1998; Karue, 1998). Camel milk is popular in Saudi Arabia and consumed as fresh and soured milk (Abu - Taraboush, Al - Dagal, & Al - Royli, 1998). Fresh and f ermented camel milks have been used in different regions in the world including India, Russia and Sudan as a treatment for a series of diseases such as dropsy, jaundice, tuberculosis, asthma and leishmaniasis or kala - azar (Abdelgadir, Ahmed, & Dirar, 1998; Shalash, 1984). Recently, camel milk was also reported to have other potential therapeutic properties, such as anti - carcinogenic (Magjeed, 2005), anti - diabetic (Agrawal, Budania, Sharma, Gupta, & Kochar, 2007a), and anti - hypertensive (Quan, Tsuda, & Miyam oto, 2008), and has been recommended to be consumed by children who are allergic to bovine milk (El - Agamy, Nawar, Shamsia, Awad, & Haenlein, 2009). Moreover, camel urine was also reported to be used as a treatment for diarrhoea (Al - Attas, 2008). Camel milk has not been given as much attention in research compared with bovine milk. Most of the research conducted on camels in the past was mainly focused on their anatomical and physiological features (Farah & Farah - Riesen, 1985). However, the recent studies ha ve mainly concentrated on the compositional, characteristics and functionality of camel milk. Several reviews have be en published on camel milk (e.g , Farah, 1993). This review covers the availab le information from 1997 to 20 13 with emphasis on d romedary ca mel milk composition. The aim of this paper is to review the curr ently available information on d romedary camel milk composition, derived dairy product , and therapeutic value and functionality