J Ethnopharmacol. 2017 Jan 4. pii: S0378-8741(16)31784-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2016.12.044. [Epub ahead of print]
- 1Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Cagliari, 09124 Cagliari, Italy. Electronic address: marcoleonti@netscape.net.
- 2Institute
of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zürich, 8008
Zürich, Switzerland; Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch
University, 7601 Stellenbosch, South Africa.
- 3Institute of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zürich, 8008 Zürich, Switzerland.
- 4Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Cagliari, 09124 Cagliari, Italy.
- 5Department of Statistics and O.R. Rey Juan Carlos University, 28938 Madrid, Spain.
- 6Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, 09124 Cagliari, Italy.
Abstract
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE:
Ethnopharmacological
investigations of traditional medicines have made significant
contributions to plant-derived drugs, as well as the advancement of
pharmacology. Drug discovery
from medicinal flora is more complex than generally acknowledged
because plants are applied for different therapeutic indications within
and across cultures. Therefore we propose the concept of "reverse ethnopharmacology"
and compare biomedical uses of plant taxa with their ethnomedicinal and
popular uses and test the effect of these on the probability of finding
anticancer drugs.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
For
this analysis we use data on taxonomy and medical indications of plant
derived biomedical drugs, clinical trial, and preclinical trial drug candidates published by Zhu et al.1 and compare their therapeutic indications with their ethnomedicinal and popular uses as reported in the NAPRALERT®
database. Specifically, we test for increase or decrease of the
probability of finding anticancer drugs based on ethnomedicinal and
popular reports with Bayesian logistic regression analyses.
RESULTS:
Anticancer therapy resulted as the most frequent biomedicinal indication of the therapeutics derived from the 225 drug
producing higher plant taxa and showed an association with
ethnomedicinal and popular uses in women's medicine, which was also the
most important popular use-category. Popular remedies for dysmenorrhoea,
and uses as emmenagogues, abortifacients and contraceptives showed a
positive effect on the probability of finding anticancer drugs. Another
positive effect on the probability of discovering anticancer
therapeutics was estimated for popular herbal drugs associated with the
therapy of viral and bacterial infections, while the highest effect was
found for popular remedies used to treat cancer symptoms. However, this
latter effect seems to be influenced by the feedback loop and divulgence
of biomedical knowledge on the popular level.
CONCLUSION:
We introduce the concept of reverse ethnopharmacology
and show that it is possible to estimate the probability of finding
biomedical drugs based on ethnomedicinal uses. The detected associations
confirm the classical ethnopharmacological approach where a popular
remedy for disease category X results in a biomedical drug
for disease category X but does also point out the existence of
cross-over relationships where popular remedies for disease category X
result in biomedical therapeutics for disease category Y.
Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
KEYWORDS:
Biodiversity; Bioprospecting; anticancer; drug discovery; traditional medicine; women's medicne
