Journal
MALARIA JOURNAL
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
BMC
DOI: 10.1186/1475-2875-12-449
Keywords
Africa; Malaria; Medicinal plants; Natural products; Traditional medicine
Categories
Funding
- Lhasa Ltd, Leeds, UK through the Chemical and Bioactivity Information Centre (CBIC), University of Buea, Cameroon
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Traditional medicine caters for about 80% of the health care needs of many rural populations around the world, especially in developing countries. In addition, plant-derived compounds have played key roles in drug discovery. Malaria is currently a public health concern in many countries in the world due to factors such as chemotherapy faced by resistance, poor hygienic conditions, poorly managed vector control programmes and no approved vaccines. In this review, an attempt has been made to assess the value of African medicinal plants for drug discovery by discussing the anti-malarial virtue of the derived phytochemicals that have been tested by in vitro and in vivo assays. This survey was focused on pure compounds derived from African flora which have exhibited anti-malarial properties with activities ranging from very active to weakly active. However, only the compounds which showed anti-malarial activities from very active to moderately active are discussed in this review. The activity of 278 compounds, mainly alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, coumarines, phenolics, polyacetylenes, xanthones, quinones, steroids, and lignans have been discussed. The first part of this review series covers the activity of 171 compounds belonging to the alkaloid and terpenoid classes. Data available in the literature indicated that African flora hold an enormous potential for the development of phytomedicines for malaria.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available