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Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Malaria in the Plateau Region, Togo

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

  1. 1Centre de recherche et de Formation sur les Plantes Médicinales, Université de Lomé, Togo
  2. 2Centre de Recherche Biomoléculaire Pietro Annigoni, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

CORRESPONDENCE

Simplice D. Karou

Centre de recherche et de Formation sur les Plantes Médicinales, Université de Lomé, Togo

simplicekarou@hotmail.com

Volume 8, Issue 5s · pp. S12-S18 · 2016 · DOI: 10.4103/0974-8490.178646

ABSTRACT

In Togo, malaria constitutes a major public health problem but, until now, the population still mostly relies on herbal medicine for healing. This study aimed to document medicinal plants used for malaria therapy in the Plateau region of the country. Semi-structured questionnaire interviews were used to gather ethnobotanical and sociodemographic data from traditional healers of the study area. A total of 61 plants species belonging to 33 families were found to be in use for malaria therapy in the Plateau region. Caesalpiniaceae were the most represented family with 7 species, followed by Euphorbiaceae and Poaceae with 4 species each. According to the relative frequency of citation (RFC), Newbouldia laevis Seem. (RFC =0.52), Sarcocephalus latifolius (Sm.) E.A. Bruce (RFC =0.48), Acanthospermum hispidum DC. (RFC =0.43), and Senna siamea (Lam.) H.S. Irwin and Barneby (RFC =0.40) were the most cited in the treatment of malaria in the traditional medicine in the Plateau region. The parts of plants used could either be the barks, roots, leaves, or whole plants. The recipes also could be a combination of various species of plants or plant parts. This study highlights the potential sources for the development of new antimalarial drugs from indigenous medicinal plants found in the Plateau region of Togo. Such results could be a starting point for in vitro antimalarial screenings.

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    Agbodeka, K., Gbekley, H. E., Karou, S. D., Anani, K., Agbonon, A., Tchacondo, T., Batawila, K., Simpore, J., & Gbeassor, M. (2016). Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Malaria in the Plateau Region, Togo. Pharmacognosy Research, 8(5s), S12-S18. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-8490.178646

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    © 2016 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