South American Medicinal Plants as a Potential Source of bioactive Compounds

MUSCHIETTI L; MARTINO V

Research Signpost

Lugar: Kerala India; Año: 2007

Since ancient times natural products have been used as medicines and even today they continue to play an important role in health care. Among them, medicinal plants may be used as crude drugs, infusions, decoctions, poultices, as dietary supplements or herbal medicines or even more they are a source of active compounds or templates for synthetic modification. The discovery of these natural bioactive compounds is closely related with the ethnomedical medicine which may be defined as the use of plants as medicines. The scope of this book is to provide useful information to the scientific community about the potential of South American medicinal plants as a source of active molecules concerning a wide range of biological activities. South American tropical rainforests comprise one third of the world’s botanical biodiversity as a result of the elevate temperatures and humidity and these conditions lead tropical plants to be of the most valuable sources of chemical entities. Besides, Indian populations in South America have strongly relied on medicinal plants for the treatment of different diseases and their knowledge has come up to our days??? In this book, Chapter 1 sets a starting point in the subject since it remarks the strong importance of ethnomedical and Herbarium data as a support of future pharmacological developments from natural products. The author points out that the correct identification of the plant material, as well as the information of the plant abundance and soil coverage must be documented in local herbaria before the global biodiversity decreases and its economic importance is evaluated. In chapter 2, a bibliographic survey on plants used for the treatment of fungal infections is presented and the results of the antifungal test performed on their extracts show that ethnomedical information is highly valuable in the discovery of new antifungal molecules. In chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6, the authors give a compilation of the phytochemical and pharmacological profiles of several medicinal species from South America: Phyllanthus sellowianus, Punica granatum and Gentianella, Gomphrena, Alternanthera and Amaranthus species, thus highlighting the importance of the ethnomedical information in the discovery of new bioactive principles. Chapter 7 resumes the chemical and biological studies conducted at the Universidade do Vale do Itajaí (UNIVALI) with Brazilian medicinal plants looking for more active drugs of future use as medicinal agents. Chapter 8 gives an overview of what has been reported in the search for antiprotozoal compounds from South American medicinal plants and gives the results of the investigations carried out at the University of Buenos Aires on this subject. These contributions will surely aware the readers about the importance of natural products and traditional knowledge as a starting point for scientific investigations and for drug development. We gratefully acknowledge Dr. S.G. Pandalai from Research Signpost, who kindly invited us be the editors of this book. We wish to thank all the authors, for their excellent contributions and timely response.