Ethnopharmacological survey of plants used in the traditional treatment of pain conditions in Mali

Publication date: Available online 11 April 2019Source: Journal of Herbal MedicineAuthor(s): Ombeline Danton, Aimé Somboro, Baba Fofana, Drissa Diallo, Lassine Sidibé, Catherine Rubat-Coudert, Fabien Marchand, Alain Eschalier, Sylvie Ducki, Pierre ChalardAbstractPain is among the major concerns of healthcare authorities across the world. It is complicated to diagnose, manage and treat. Current western treatments are successful to some extent in relieving pain; they provide minimum improvements in terms of physical and emotional functioning and are often accompanied by side effects. Finding new solutions in pain management has thus become a priority. Natural products have always been a huge source of new active principles; traditional medicine is thus a key to innovation. In Mali, traditional remedies are more popular than pharmaceutical drugs but this knowledge, verbally transferred from generation to generation is at risk as younger generations are not taking over. Thus, this study was designed to identify plants that are used traditionally in the South of Mali for the treatment of painful conditions. Data was collected by means of semi-structured face-to-face interviews with traditional healers (N = 108) in the regions of Bamako, Sikasso and Dioïla. Two quantitative ethnopharmacological indexes were calculated: Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC) and Fidelity Level (FL) when RFC > 0.10. A total of 66 plant species distributed across 29 families were recorded dur...
Source: Journal of Herbal Medicine - Category: Complementary Medicine Source Type: research