Rhamnaceae family as a source of herbal and conventional medicines

Abstract

Worldwide interest in natural products as preventive and therapeutic agents has lead to a greater appreciation of the rich heritage of traditional systems of medicine. Majority of drugs owe their origin to plants, either as modification products of major plant constituents or the actual constituents. Most of the plants modem uses are related to their traditional uses. This then has necessitated intensive studies on plants all over the world, on their pharmacological and other activities as well as isolating their constituents and characterizing them and also studying of their major adverse effects and how they can be reversed. In some cases there has been synthetic modification of these natural products and their production in large-scale for use as conventional products. This work entails a compilation of information on the recent scientific work done on plants in the Rhamnaceae family. The literature information herein has been obtained from scientific journals detailing recent scientific discoveries about their constituents and activity. There is a lot of work showing plants potential in management of infections such as bacterial, fungal and protozoal. It is thus important that all the scientific work done be followed up in an effort to avail better drugs in future, especially for the neglected diseases such as trypanasomiasis whose only treatment involves the use of very toxic agents such as arsenicals and also for resistant gram negative bacterial strains. Work needs to be done to modify these natural compounds so as to increase their potency, reduce their toxicity as well as devising methods of large scale production of such compounds in a sustainable and affordable manner.