African Ethnopharmacology and New Drug Discovery

This review covers the general area of disease and problems such as malaria, bacterial and fungal infections, free radical damage and the decline in the immune system. After a brief history of ethnopharmacology, we discuss the scientific approaches that have been used in the screening of medicinal plants and identify some African medicinal plants that are used successfully in the treatment of these diseases. It is evident that African medicinal plants are continuously being screened for their pharmacological properties and many interesting results with crude extracts have occasionally been obtained through the isolation and identification of the active principles. However, as a source of new drugs, African medicinal plants are understudied, considering the high percentage of plants not yet screened for their biochemical composition or for their pharmacological properties. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________