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Vol. 7(14), pp. 845-856, 10 April, 2013 DOI: 10.5897/JMPR12.392 Journal of Medicinal Plants Research ISSN 1996-0875 ©2013 Academic Journals http://www.academicjournals.org/JMPR Full Length Research Paper Confrontation between ethnopharmacology and scientific results of the herbal medicaments from Brazil to be applied in primary health care Tales Alexandre Aversi-Ferreira 1,2 *, Peandra Paula Ribeiro 1, Nattany Camila da Silva 1, Lorraine Dias Brandão 1, Lúcia Helena Almeida Gratão 1, Enkhjargal Nyamdavaa2, Roqueline Ametila Aversi-Ferreira 1, Hisao Nishijo 2 and Guilherme Nobre Lima do Nascimento 3 1Biochemistry and Neurosciences Integrated Laboratory – LABINE, Federal University of Goiás, UFG, Catalão, Goiás, Brazil. 2System Emotional Science, School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan. 3Biochemistry and Neurosciences Integrated Laboratory – LABINE, Federal University of Tocantins, Palmas, Brazil. Accepted 17 April, 2012 Many studies on medicinal plants were conducted without botanical or pharmacological selection, in what produced little information to support the use of phytotherapic medicine in basic health units. The aim of this work was to generate data from important medicinal plants used by Brazilian population obtained from ethnopharmacological studies and indicate its correct use based on pharmacological test. It was demonstrated that a proportion higher than 60% of errors from ethnopharmacologic indications confronted against ratified pharmacological studies. From these data, the health professional could obtain scientific support to use phytotherapy in alternative medicine in basic health units. Key words: Ethnopharmacology, pharmacobotany, phytotherapy, basic health unit. INTRODUCTION Actually, there is interest from industry and government in Fonseca-Kruel, 2007; Alves et al., 2008; Miranda and linking the technological advance and natural medicinal Hanazaki, 2008), and in recent years, society has show- products based on popular knowledge, in order to ed interest in the use of alternative and complementary develop a health care policy (França et al., 2008). therapies, especially based on the popular belief that Concomitantly, the World Health Organization (WHO) “what is natural is harmless”, and also for reasons has invested on programs to promote alternative of social and economic order, such as difficult access to therapies in order to meet the needs of the primary health industrial medicines and institutional health services care and supply the lack of products of pharmaceutical (Rates, 2001; Oliveira and Gonçalves, 2006; Tomazzoni industry (Rates, 2001; França et al., 2008;). et al., 2006; França et al., 2008). Brazil has the greatest world’s diversity of plant species Other advantage of the use of alternative therapy is (Medeiros and Cabral, 2001; Rates, 2001; Rodrigues and associated with the high prevalence of side effects from Carvalho, 2001; Resende and Cocco, 2002; Rodrigues the use of industrial drugs (Rates, 2001; Maioli-Azevedo and Carline, 2003a, b; Medeiros et al., 2004; Funari and and Fonseca-Kruel, 2007). Ferro, 2005; Malafaia et al., 2006; Souza and Felfile, However, medicines derived from phytotherapy and 2006; Vendrusculo and Mentz, 2006; Maioli-Azevedo and alternative therapies are marketed at fairs and popular *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: +81 076 4347216. Fax: +81 076 4345012. 846 J. Med. Plants Res. drugstores without sanitary control (Rates, 2001; (Consendey et al., 2000), Coulaud-Cunha et al., 2004; Maioli-Azevedo and Some cities in Brazil have implemented a program of Fonseca-Kruel, 2007; França et al., 2008), prescription or herbal medicine use in primary health care in order to botanical identification (Rates, 2001), and usually, meet the needs of drugs in their communities (Resende phytotherapy products are marketed with supposed and Cocco, 2002; Alves and Silva, 2003; Ogava et al., pharmacological activity; however, some of these drugs 2003; Michilis, 2004; França et al., 2008 can be toxic and their action may not have been tested Alternative therapies can offer and contribute to health by pharmacological studies (Rates, 2001; Coulaud- sciences, and to enable individuals to have a relative Cunha et al., 2004; Oliveira and Gonçalves, 2006; autonomy in relation to the self-care (Rezende and Tomazzoni et al., 2006). Cocco, 2002),. A common case in Brazil is the "espinheira-santa", Alves and Silva (2003) reported that nurses have used which can be purchased in the informal market. However, alternative therapies such as the use of herbal medicine, the commercialized species is not Maytenus ilicefolia justifying the lack of credibility in allopathic resources for Mart but Sorocea bomplandii Bailon, the species most the general population, also associated with the desire to often used to falsify "espinheira-santa" (Coulaud-Cunha facilitate the maintenance of the health of their patients, et al., 2004). transforming these treatments more accessible to Much of ethnobotanical studies conducted in Brazil population of several socio-economic levels. combine information from users of medicinal plants in From the exposed facts given in the foregoing, it is several communities with botanical and/or pharmacolo- possible to verify the fact that the use of herbal medicines gical data from these populations. (Rodrigues and in primary health care shows some difficulties, mainly due Carvalho, 2001; Alves and Silva, 2003; Rodrigues and to the absence of indications of the use of these drugs Carlini, 2003a,b; Medeiros et al., 2004; Fenner et al., based on adequate scientific studies, or because 2006; Silva et al, 2006; Souza and Felfile, 2006; Vila phytotherapy studies are more descriptive and do not Verde et al., 2006; Vendruscolo and Mentz, 2006; verify whether these medicines have side effects. Akerreta et al., 2007; Paixão, 2007; Miranda and Therefore, the purpose of this work was to provide data Hanazaki, 2008; Jesus et al., 2009; Pereira et al., 2009). on the main plants used by Brazilian population des- Nevertheless, most of these studies were not aimed at cribed in ethnobothanical and/or ethnopharmacological assessing the dosage and use of medicinal herbs, and studies indicating their adequate use, based on studies the use of these results for the community studied derived from biological and pharmacological tests. (Vendruscolo and Mentz, 2006). Therefore, this aspect is important, considering that the returning of knowledge to MATERIAL AND METHODS society can contribute to increase the understanding and valuation of the species under study (Patzlaff and This is a bibliographic study, from the descriptive and comparative Peixoto, 2009). aspect. It was developed from the search of scientific papers available in the following data basis: LILACS, IBECS, MEDLINE, Many works have been conducted without selection of Library Cochrane, SciELO, Academic Google, from phytoterapy, botanical or pharmacological criteria, which generates farmacognosy, ethnopharmacology, ethnobotanic and biological many descriptive data, but little data to support the use of tests indexers. herbal medicines in primary health care strategies Generally, 32 studies were available by refinement method on (Resende and Cocco, 2002; Alves and Silva, 2003; the selection criteria that was to be published from 1994 to 2009. Tomazzoni et al., 2006). Descriptive data play the role of The other 72 papers were used because they contained biological or pharmacological assays on plants cited by the first papers preserving the traditional and cultural information oppor- previously studied. tunities for scientific research. However, other authors The studied papers are divided into: 1) General subjects (Table should verify the accuracy of this information by com- 1); 2) Brazilian regions (Figure 1); 3) Rural, urban zone and others parison of those data with specialized literature. Indeed, (Figure 2); 4) Use of medicinal plants in basic health units (Figure the aspects to be considered for the rational study of 3). Later, a table containing the medicinal plants that were medicinal plants for drug development are the confronted with the proven action by biological tests were constructed (Table 2). ethnomedical, ecological, chemotaxonomic, epidemiolo- Information on medicinal plants were obtained from the analysis gical, genomic and metabolic studies (Albuquerque and of articles, which were used to elaborate tables and graphs of the Hanazaki, 2006; Guirado and Cuellar, 2008). location of these studies and the comparison of data obtained from Research on herbal medicines from the cultural source communities with scientific data about the effects of these plants. has a sense that must exceed the mere compilation (Albuquerque and Hanazaki, 2006). RESULTS What has been shown indicates an important advance in understanding the use of natural resources, because Papers on pharmacological data were used after the the public health system in Brazil and in other developing analysis of papers from Table 2; therefore, papers related countries does not have an efficient pharmaceutical on ethnobotany and/or ethnofarmacology shown in Table assistance program to supply the needs of drug to poor 1 were not computed in the calculus of percentage shown populations, a group that is at higher risk of becoming ill in the other figures. Aversi-Ferreira et al. 847 Table 1. General issues addressed by ethnopharmacology and/or ethnobotanical papers. General subject Number of papers Ethnobotany

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