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Medicinal plants use in central Togo (Africa) with an emphasis on the timing

1, 1★, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1★ Corresponding author

  1. 1Centre de Recherche et de Formation sur les Plantes Médicinales (CERFOPLAM), Université de Lomé
  2. 2Laboratoire de Chimie de l’Eau, Faculté des Sciences (FDS), Université de Lomé, Lomé, Togo

CORRESPONDENCE

Simplice D. Karou

Centre de Recherche et de Formation sur les Plantes Médicinales (CERFOPLAM), Université de Lomé

simplicekarou@hotmail.com

Volume 4, Issue 2 · pp. 92-103 · 2012 · DOI: 10.4103/0974-8490.94724

ABSTRACT

Plant-based remedies continue to play a key role in the health care of people in Togo; however, there is a lack of published data in medicinal plants and medical practices of the people in the country. This study was aimed at documenting the plant utilization in the Tem folk medicine in the central region of Togo. An ethnobotanical survey was conducted with traditional healers in the central region of Togo using a semi-structured questionnaire. This study demonstrated that local specialists in the central region of Togo tend to agree with each other in terms of the plants used to treat diabetes (ICF = 0.38), infertility, and abdominal pains (ICF = 0.33), but cite a much more diverse groups of plants to treat problems related to arterial hypertension, sickle cell disease, and abscess. They use 144 herbal concoctions made of 72 plants, distributed among 36 botanical families. The Euphorbiaceae family with eight species was best represented in terms of the number of species. The species with the highest use value were Khaya senegalensis (Desr.) A. Juss. (Meliaceae) (UV = 0.36), Anthocleista djalonensis A. Chev. (Gentianaceae) (UV = 0.27), Trichilia emetica Vahl (Meliaceae) (UV = 0.25), and Sarcocephalus latifolius (Sm.) E. A. Bruce (Rubiaceae) (UV = 0.21). They also rely on the timing in the plant processing and the administration of herbal remedies. All these findings are based on empirical observations; laboratory screenings are needed to check the effectiveness of these plants.

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    Tchacondo, T., Karou, S. D., Agban, A., Bako, M., Batawila, K., Bawa, M. L., Gbeassor, M., & Souza, C. D. (2012). Medicinal plants use in central Togo (Africa) with an emphasis on the timing. Pharmacognosy Research, 4(2), 92-103. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-8490.94724

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    © 2012 Author(s)

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0