A Bioactivity Versus Ethnobotanical Survey of Medicinal Plants from Nigeria, West Africa

Abstract

Traditional medicinal practices play a key role in health care systems in countries with developing economies. The aim of this survey was to validate the use of traditional medicine within local Nigerian communities. In this review, we examine the ethnobotanical uses of selected plant species from the Nigerian flora and attempt to correlate the activities of the isolated bioactive principles with known uses of the plant species in African traditional medicine. Thirty-three (33) plant species were identified and about 100 out of the 120 compounds identified with these plants matched with the ethnobotanical uses of the plants.

Medicinal plants and traditional healing practices in ehotile people, around the aby lagoon (eastern littoral of Côte d'Ivoire)

“…This propensity of African ethnobotanists to medicinal plants reflects the fact that the study of plants used traditionally as medicines is an interesting discipline because of the possibility to find new drugs [42]. This has prompted many research teams to carry out studies on plants used in Africa by traditional healers against diseases.…”

“…Nevertheless, this abundant literature shows that despite the advances in Western medicine, African traditional medicine has gained renewed interest in the health care services throughout the continent. This could probably be due to the rapidly increasing awareness of the potential and curative abilities of alternative medicines, especially from the use of medicinal plants [42], as well as the inadequate access to Western medicine and physicians and the high cost for Western drugs [3]. …”

Compounds from African Medicinal Plants with Activities against Protozoal Diseases: Schistosomiasis, Trypanosomiasis and Leishmaniasis

“…[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] The criteria for choosing a particular natural product for studies are either based on the pre-existing traditional use of the source species in therapy (ethnobotanical knowledge) or the search for structurally related molecules with known pharmacologically active agents from chemical databases. [49][50][51][52][53][54] The African continent is highly diverse ethnobotanically. This might explain why about 80% of the population tends to rely on medicinal plants as a primary source of healthcare.…”

“…[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67] It is our goal to provide evidence of the efficacy and potency of plants used in traditional medicine against protozoal infections. The systematic documentation of the plant-based chemical constituents of African traditional medicine and attempting to using in silico procedures to investigate their modes of action are ongoing efforts, [44][45][46]52,53 particularly on the isolated compounds from African medicinal plants (AMPs) with evaluated in vitro and/or in vivo activities against trypanosomiasis, [68][69][70][71][72][73][74] schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis 73,74 and other parasitic protozoal diseases. 4 However, the most recent review dates about 3 years back and was focused only on plants collected from Nigeria.…”

Phytochemical Screening and Antimicrobial Studies of the Aerial Part of Aeschynomene uniflora Mey

“…Medicinal plants play important role in meeting the basic health needs in many developing countries and the industrialized countries. The use of medicinal plants has been based on the extraction which has led to the development of several drugs traditionally used in folk medicine [4]. Various drugs with medicinal properties have been attributed to natural herbs and medicinal plants which constitute the main source of new pharmaceuticals and health-care products [5].…”