The Journal of Ethnopharmacology is dedicated to the exchange of information and understandings about people's use of plants, fungi, animals, microorganisms and minerals and their biological and pharmacological effects based on the principles established through international conventions. Early people confronted with illness and disease, discovered a wealth of useful therapeutic agents in the plant and animal kingdoms. The empirical knowledge of these medicinal substances and their toxic potential was passed on by oral tradition and sometimes recorded in herbals and other texts on materia medica. Many valuable drugs of today (e.g., atropine, ephedrine, tubocurarine, digoxin, reserpine) came into use through the study of indigenous remedies. Chemists continue to use plant-derived drugs (e.g., morphine, taxol, physostigmine, quinidine, emetine) as prototypes in their attempts to develop more effective and less toxic medicinals.
A team of researchers that includes Worcester Polytechnic Institute Biology Professor Pamela Weathers has found that extracts from the leaves of the Artemisia annua plant, a medicinal herb also known as sweet wormwood, inhibit ...
May 4, 2021
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For hundreds of years, healers in São Tomé e Príncipe—an island off the western coast of Africa—have prescribed cata-manginga leaves and bark to their patients. These pickings from the Voacanga africana tree are said ...
Aug 4, 2014
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Well-known for its bactericidal and anti-fungal properties, Brazilian red propolis has now been found to act powerfully against the parasite that causes schistosomiasis, reducing the number of eggs and killing the helminths ...
Dec 7, 2020
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The main challenges associated with existing lung cancer drugs are severe side effects and drug resistance. There is hence a constant need to explore new molecules for improving the survival rate and quality of life of lung ...
Aug 1, 2022
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Strawberry geranium (Saxifraga stolonifera) has been used in Japan as a herbal medicine to treat wounds and swelling, and continues to be an ingredient in food and cosmetics. Pharmacological studies have shown that extracts ...
Apr 23, 2021
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An Atlas-award winning study reported in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology has found that traditional uses of medicinal plants in the Peruvian rainforest are, to a large extent, backed up by science. Samples taken from plants ...
Jun 4, 2018
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In the Dai minority region of China, the Aspidopterys obcordata (Hei Gai Guan) has been used as a fork medicine for the treatment of urinary tract infections, cystitis, and urinary tract stones. Previous studies showed that ...
May 8, 2024
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Often lacking in natural product drug discovery are ‘mechanistic insights’; that is, insights into the events at the molecular level that are behind any effects that plant compounds have on cells or organisms. With ...
Jul 10, 2012
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