ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE:
For
innumerous clinical cases related to women's health and precarious medical care
in developing countries, a large repertoire of plants have been used as popular
medicines in order to fill this gap, which in a certain way creates health
risks to users, since pharmacological and toxicological tests are still
insufficient to guarantee their efficacy and safety. Besides therapeutic use,
abortive plants are broadly used in coutries where abortion is prohibited,
increasing that risk even more. In this way, ethnopharmacological studies that
register plants used for women's health can contribute not only to the
selection of potential bioactives, enriching the repertoire of drugs available
to females, above all in public health systems, but also questioning the safety
of products that are used without prescription.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
This review aims at determining plants applied by
Brazilian cultures in the treatment of conditions related to maternity,
menstrual cycle and other women´s health particularities, and to supplement the
lack of epidemiological data available to assess the health of indigenous,
rural and other populations of Brazilian women.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
A
literature review was
conducted of the collection at the Ethnobotanical and Ethnopharmacological
Center of the Federal University of São Paulo (period covered: 1965 to 2012).
All of the 343 articles were consulted and 31 articles mentioning therapeutic
uses of interest were selected. Relevant information was extracted to compose
Table 1 - Maternity, Table 2 - Menstrual Cycle and Table 3 - Other Conditions.
Data was statistically analyzed in order to generate the discussion about
plants used in healing contexts by different Brazilian ethnicities. A
bibliographic review was
performed using the Scopus database to collect the following information about
the most cited plants: ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology of non-Brazilian cultures
for women's health conditions, pharmacology, toxicology, and adverse reactions.
RESULTS:
A total
of 319 species were cited for 22 indications related to women's health.
Ninety-seven species were indicated for conditions related to maternity, 94 to
the menstrual cycle and 232 to others. The same species could be present in
more than one of these three categories. The most cited family was Fabaceae
(13.5%), and the species were Ruta graveolens L. (1.76%) and Strychnos
pseudoquina A. St.-Hil (1.76%). The most frequent part utilized, mode of
preparation and route of administration were leaves (2.0%), tea (73.38%) and
oral (87. 2%), respectively. The indications that showed the highest number of
species were: to treat venereal diseases (69 species), abortive (54) and
anti-inflammatory for the ovaries and/or uterus (54). According to our
bibliographic survey, among the 19 most indicated species in this review, only
four are also used by non-Brazilian cultures for conditions related to women's
health; 25% of them were pharmacologically investigated and it was possible to
validate their ethnopharmacological/ ethnobotanical use, 10.5% have presented
well-described adverse reactions and for 42.1% of these species toxicological
studies were performed.
CONCLUSION:
The
survey raised important data about plants implemented in healing related to
women's health conditions by Brazilian cultures and their practices. The
compilation presented in this study enables the realization of further
investigation regarding the development of herbal medicines and contributes to
the incrementation of policies focused on these cultures. Further
phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological studies should be conducted,
which will allow the discovery of pharmacological properties, bioactive
constituents, and moreover, adequate posology, manner of use and adverse events.
- 1Center for Ethnobotanical and Ethnopharmacological Studies-Institute of Environmental Sciences, Chemical and Pharmaceutical, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (http://www.unifesp.br/), Brazil. Electronic address: pbyazbek@gmail.com.
- 2Center for Ethnobotanical and Ethnopharmacological Studies-Institute of Environmental Sciences, Chemical and Pharmaceutical, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil.
- J Ethnopharmacol. 2015 Dec 27. pii: S0378-8741(15)30306-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2015.12.054.
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