Ethnobotany and antioxidant evaluation of commercialized medicinal plants from the Brazilian Pampa

Abstract

Despite the importance of medicinal plants for the healthcare of local people, the knowledge about medicinal species used in the Pampa biome has been neglected over the years. In this study, an ethnobotanical survey was employed aiming to characterize the species richness and diversity of commercialized medicinal plant species in five cities within the Brazilian Pampa. Additionally, among the listed plants, ten species were selected for in vitro testing of their potential antioxidant activity. A total of 56 plant species belonging to 33 botanical families were listed by the 115 interviewees. No significant difference in commercialized medicinal plant species, and very similar species richness was observed among the cities, indicating that the local knowledge is consistently preserved across the studied cities. According to the biochemical analysis, Sphagneticola trilobata, Malva parviflora and Struthanthus flexicaulis emerged as very promising species for antioxidant activity. Further studies are recommended to advance our knowledge about the richness of medicinal plant species in the Brazilian Pampa, and to assess their therapeutic potential.

Malva species: Insights on its chemical composition towards pharmacological applications

“…M. parviflora antioxidant activity in the study by Teixeira et al proved a noteworthy positive association between ABTS and FRAP tests, phenol content and ABTS and FRAP tests. Thus, phenolic compounds seem to be responsible for the antioxidant activity as primary components (Teixeira, Cruz, Franco, Vieira, & Stefenon, ). More recently, polyphenols extract from M. parviflora L. leaves, consisting mainly of naringenin, rho‐coumaric acid, apigenin‐7‐glucoside, luteolin, and cinnamic acid, showed DPPH radical scavenging activity with 33.31% inhibition (Abd El‐Salam & Morsy, ).…”

Caracterização anatômica e histoquímica das folhas de Eugenia uniflora L.

“…As folhas e os frutos de E. uniflora são empregados na medicina popular em várias regiões do país (Lorenzi & Matos, 2002) no tratamento de diarreia e disenteria (Conde et al, 2014;Messias et al, 2015;Silva et al, 2015;Teixeira et al, 2016), gripe (Lima, Magalhães & Santos, 2008;Borges & Peixoto, 2009;Neto et al, 2014), parasitas intestinais (Lozano et al, 2014;Messias et al, 2015), febre (Santos, Lima & Oliveira, 2014), hipertensão (Santos, Lima & Oliveira, 2014;Vásquez, Mendonça & Noda, 2014) e como calmante e diurético (Alves et al, 2008).…”

Effect of boiling on nutritional, antioxidant and physicochemical properties of edible plants (Malva parviflora and Myrtillocactus geometrizans)

“…In (Teixeira et al, 2016). The activity antioxidant by mallow leaf could possibly possess radical scavengers activity and therefore maintain a good antioxidant activity (Abd El-Salam and Morsy, 2019).…”