Data on medicinal plants used to treat respiratory infections and related symptoms in South Africa.

ABSTRACT: We provide details of 306 plant species used to treat and manage respiratory infections and related symptoms in South Africa. About a third of the documented species belong to four plant families, namely the Asteraceae (15.7%), Fabaceae (6.1%), Lamiaceae (5.6%) and Amaryllidaceae (4.6%). An overwhelming majority of documented species are used as medicine to treat tuberculosis (40.2%), cough (36.6%), fever (29.1%), chest complaints (28.8%) and cold (23.2%). The potentially bioactive phytochemical compounds and associated pharmacological properties of the documented plant species are also provided. This data demonstrated strong correlation between phytochemistry, pharmacological properties and medicinal uses of more than three quarters (80.1%) of the documented species used against respirato

SUBMITTER: Semenya SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6198089 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature