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Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)

Plants in Kenya are becoming increasingly important as sources of traditional medicines. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that malaria kills about 2.7 million people every year, 90% of who are from Africa. Malaria continues to be a national concern in Kenya as it plays a major role...

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Autores principales: Njoroge, Grace N, Bussmann, Rainer W
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1397805/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16451716
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-2-8
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author Njoroge, Grace N
Bussmann, Rainer W
author_facet Njoroge, Grace N
Bussmann, Rainer W
author_sort Njoroge, Grace N
collection PubMed
description Plants in Kenya are becoming increasingly important as sources of traditional medicines. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that malaria kills about 2.7 million people every year, 90% of who are from Africa. Malaria continues to be a national concern in Kenya as it plays a major role in the high mortality rates being experienced currently. The use and miss-use of chloroquine to prevent and treat falciparium malaria has led to widespread appearance of chloroquine resistant parasites in Kenya and other tropical countries. These factors and the rising costs of non-chloroquine drugs have made the local people to turn to traditional remedies for management of this menace. This paper examines the current utilization of traditional plant medicines in managing malaria menace in Central Kenya. The results show both indigenous and introduced species are in use indicating traditional medicinal practices in this region are dynamic. In total 58 species in 54 genera and 33 families were identified. The family Rubiaceae was found to have the highest number of reported species. Use of the various taxa is compared between five districts within Central Province of Kenya. The commonest species in this pharmacopoeia are: Caesalpinia volkensii Harms, Strychnos henningsii Gilg, Ajuga remota Benth., Warbugia ugandensis Sprague and Olea europaea L. The first three species are used in all the five districts while the others are restricted in some of the districts. In 74% of the anti-malarial plant species reported in this study, the remedies are obtained in destructive manner and may need conservation measures to ensure sustainable utilization. The results of this study become a basis for selecting plants for further pharmacological and phytochemical studies in developing new and locally relevant anti-malarial agents.
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spelling pubmed-13978052006-03-11 Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya) Njoroge, Grace N Bussmann, Rainer W J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research Plants in Kenya are becoming increasingly important as sources of traditional medicines. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that malaria kills about 2.7 million people every year, 90% of who are from Africa. Malaria continues to be a national concern in Kenya as it plays a major role in the high mortality rates being experienced currently. The use and miss-use of chloroquine to prevent and treat falciparium malaria has led to widespread appearance of chloroquine resistant parasites in Kenya and other tropical countries. These factors and the rising costs of non-chloroquine drugs have made the local people to turn to traditional remedies for management of this menace. This paper examines the current utilization of traditional plant medicines in managing malaria menace in Central Kenya. The results show both indigenous and introduced species are in use indicating traditional medicinal practices in this region are dynamic. In total 58 species in 54 genera and 33 families were identified. The family Rubiaceae was found to have the highest number of reported species. Use of the various taxa is compared between five districts within Central Province of Kenya. The commonest species in this pharmacopoeia are: Caesalpinia volkensii Harms, Strychnos henningsii Gilg, Ajuga remota Benth., Warbugia ugandensis Sprague and Olea europaea L. The first three species are used in all the five districts while the others are restricted in some of the districts. In 74% of the anti-malarial plant species reported in this study, the remedies are obtained in destructive manner and may need conservation measures to ensure sustainable utilization. The results of this study become a basis for selecting plants for further pharmacological and phytochemical studies in developing new and locally relevant anti-malarial agents. BioMed Central 2006-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC1397805/ /pubmed/16451716 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-2-8 Text en Copyright © 2006 Njoroge and Bussmann; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Njoroge, Grace N
Bussmann, Rainer W
Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title_full Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title_fullStr Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title_full_unstemmed Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title_short Diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the Kikuyus (Central Kenya)
title_sort diversity and utilization of antimalarial ethnophytotherapeutic remedies among the kikuyus (central kenya)
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1397805/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16451716
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-2-8
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