Ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, and phytochemistry of traditional medicinal plants used in the management of symptoms of tuberculosis in East Africa: a systematic review

Abstract

Objective Many studies on the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) using herbal medicines have been undertaken in recent decades in East Africa. The details, however, are highly fragmented. The purpose of this study was to provide a comprehensive overview of the reported medicinal plants used to manage TB symptoms, and to analyze scientific reports on their effectiveness and safety. Method A comprehensive literature search was performed in the major electronic databases regarding medicinal plants used in the management of TB in East Africa. A total of 44 reports were retrieved, and data were collected on various aspects of the medicinal plants such as botanical name, family, local names, part(s) used, method of preparation, efficacy, toxicity, and phytochemistry. The data were summarized into percentages and frequencies which were presented as tables and graphs. Results A total of 195 species of plants belonging to 68 families and 144 genera were identified. Most encountered species were from Fabaceae (42.6%), Lamiaceae (19.1%), Asteraceae (16.2%), and Euphorbiaceae (14.7%) families. Only 36 medicinal plants (18.5%) have been screened for antimycobacterial activity. Out of these, 31 (86.1%) were reported to be bioactive with minimum inhibitory concentrations ranging from 47 to 12,500 μg/ml. Most tested plant extracts were found to have acceptable acute toxicity profiles with cytotoxic concentrations on normal mammalian cells greater than 200 μg/ml. The most commonly reported phytochemicals were flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, saponins, cardiac glycosides, and phenols. Only Tetradenia riparia , Warburgia ugandensis , and Zanthoxylum leprieurii have further undergone isolation and characterization of the pure bioactive compounds. Conclusion East Africa has a rich diversity of medicinal plants that have been reported to be effective in the management of symptoms of TB. More validation studies are required to promote the discovery of antimycobacterial drugs and to provide evidence for standardization of herbal medicine use.

Intraspecific Variation of Phytochemicals, Antioxidant, and Antibacterial Activities of Different Solvent Extracts of Albizia coriaria Leaves from Some Agroecological Zones of Uganda

“…e whole plant, leaves, stem, and root barks, roots, seeds, and flowers are used in Uganda for the treatment of cancers, malaria, coronary diseases, allergy, nausea, headaches, mental illness, diarrhea, cough (tuberculosis), typhoid, anemia, syphilis, constipation, fevers, postpartum hemorrhage, snakebites, sore throats, herpes zoster, menorrhagia, threatened abortion, skin diseases, jaundice, and steam fumigation treatments for sore eyes and as an aphrodisiac and a general tonic [10,19,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. In other African countries, this species is used in the treatment of malaria, helminthiasis, tuberculosis, diarrhea, breast, skin, and uterine cancers, menorrhagia, hypertension, dermatological conditions, threatened abortion, venereal diseases, sore eyes, lungworms/ascaris worms (in cattle, sheep, and goats), and gastrointestinal infections and as toothbrush (Miswak) and mosquito repellent, that is, logs burnt with cow dung [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48].…”

“…Despite the widely reported medicinal potential of A. coriaria by ethnobotanical surveys, there are few reports on the phytochemistry and bioactivity of this species [25,36,49]. Classical phytochemical screening of aqueous and organic extracts of A. coriaria stem bark indicated that the active secondary metabolites are saponins, alkaloids, flavonoids, steroids, triterpenoids, reducing sugars, flavone aglycones, volatile oils, polyuronides, glucides, sterols, coumarins, and tannins [50][51][52][53][54][55].…”

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“…An electronic review of the literature was perfected in two steps: firstly, we searched all the published work (ethnobotanical books, reviews, reports, theses and primary scientific articles) with data on medicinal plants related to the six countries. The search key terms: snakebite, snake envenomation, snake poison, traditional medicine, ethnobotany, alternative medicine, ethnopharmacology, antivenom, antivenin, antiophidic, antitoxin, and snake antidotes were combined with the individual names of the countries [7,104]. Secondly, a search targeted to the use of medicinal plants in antivenom therapy was done.…”

“…Missing information in some studies such as local names, plant growth forms, and misspelled botanical names were checked from google search engine and botanical databases: The Plant List, International Plant Names Index, NCBI taxonomy browser and Tropicos. The majority of the plant names were checked manually in the botanical databases at point of entry, while the remainder were already previously checked as part of our previous work on medicinal plants in the region [7,8,104,114,177]. The collected data were checked for completeness and processed independently by the authors.…”

“…In addition, the differences in plant usage are more likely due to the climatic and soil variations that is known to account for variations in species distribution and phytochemical composition of the same plant species in different geographical locations [103]. This disparity could also be due to variations in the knowledge and experiences of antivenom therapy resulting from differences in the social and cultural backgrounds in the East African community [104]. Uganda had the highest number of plant species reported because it had more ethnobotanical reports, two of which reported exclusively on ethnomedicinal plants used in treating snakebites [21,35] as compared to Tanzania and Kenya which had one study each reporting on antivenom plants only [30,33].…”