18 – Safe African Medicinal Plants for Clinical Studies

Medicinal plants have been the basis of treatment of various diseases in African traditional medicine as well as other forms of treatment from diverse cultures of the world. About 80% of the world’s population still depends solely on traditional or herbal medicine for treatment of diseases, mostly in Africa and other developing nations. Most of the potent medicinal plants have relatively no toxic or adverse effects when used by humans, while some are very toxic to both humans and animals with the potential of damaging certain organs in the body. This calls for caution in the use of medicinal plants of which the use is presently on the increase due to easy availability, affordability, accessibility, and promising efficacy comparable to the often high cost and adverse effects of standard synthetic drug agents. This chapter highlights some safe medicinal plants with good toxicological profile in laboratory animals and/or cell culture experiment that are qualified for clinical trials in humans. Several medicinal plants were evaluated for their good toxicological profile using online research. After much screening, only those medicinal plants without serious toxic effects in animals and cell culture experiments were chosen and precisely discussed.

Keywords

African medicinal plants;
safety;
clinical trials;
toxicity;
animal studies

Cheryl & ethnovet

Monday, 13 April 2015