Traditional Uses of Herbal Medicines in Khartoum and Gezira state (Central Sudan)

Abstract

Background: Traditional medicine is a folk medicine or herbalism practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. The diversity of the climate of Sudan is responsible for its very rich flora.

Purpose: The aims of this work are to determine habitat, folkloric and current medicinal uses and the active constituents of the studied plants.

Study design: The type of study design used in this work is observational and descriptive study design.

Methodology: Method used is face-to-face interviews of herbal shops in Khartoum and Gezira state. The language used is Arabic language. The interviews involved 15 from 50 herbal shops; 10 in Khartoum state and 5 in Gezira state. The study also contains information about current uses and newly active constituents of some plants species therein were cited.

Conclusion: Eighty-six plants and herbs are reported in this study. They are distributed in Forty-three families. The popularly used species by natives were found to include Solenostemma argel, Trigonella foenum-graecum, Acacia spp, Nigella sativa and Hibiscus sabdariffa. All of which known to contain mixture of phenolic, flavonoids, terpenoids and sterols phytoconstituents. The highest numbers of plants are found belong to family Lamiaceae (Seven species), Fabaceae (Seven species), Apiaceae (Six plant species) and Asteraceae (Five plant species).