Pharmacological efficacy of local complementary and alternative medicines: Psidium guajava, Vitex negundo, Moringa oleifera and Blumea balsamefira

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Research Paper 01/11/2017
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Pharmacological efficacy of local complementary and alternative medicines: Psidium guajava, Vitex negundo, Moringa oleifera and Blumea balsamefira

Apple Omos Dano, Lucilyn Lahoylahoy Maratas
J. Biodiv. & Environ. Sci. 11(5), 194-200, November 2017.
Copyright Statement: Copyright 2017; The Author(s).
License: CC BY-NC 4.0

Abstract

The marked increase of use and consumption of herbal remedies is mainly due to the beneficial uses it has been reported to have. Despite of its popular use as complementary and alternative medicines, there is limited scientific data available about the safety and toxicological evaluations of these herbal preparations. Therefore, it is the aim of the study to carry out a preliminary antibacterial and toxicological determination of both fresh and air-dried leaves of Psidium guajava, Vitex negundo, Moringa oleifera and Blumea balsamifera. The herbal preparations varied with its antibacterial activities and compared to the standard antibiotic chloramphenicol, the resulting zones of inhibition of the various extracts were significantly smaller. However, the results signifies promising possibility of being able to purify active agents against certain pathogenic bacteria.  The non-inhibitive properties of other extracts also indirectly support some folkloric claims to help assuage some medical conditions that are not of bacterial origins. The determination of the low mutagenic potential of the herbal preparations infer that these are relatively free from possible carcinogens.

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