Ocimum Species: Ethnomedicinal Uses, Phytochemistry and Pharmacological Importance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31878/ijcrpp.2021.52.01Keywords:
Ocimum species, ethnomedicine, pharmacological potentialAbstract
Plant species belonging to the Ocimum genus are among the most popular medicinal plants and are being used for several purposes in ethnomedicine. Ocimum is universally cultivated however; the geographical distribution highlights three major centers of Ocimum diversity, these are: the tropical areas of America, the tropical region of Asia and the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa. Ocimum species have been employed traditionally for several medicinal purposes including antioxidant, antibacterial, hypoglycaemic, hepatoprotective, antiviral and other medicinal purposes. Though scientists have carried-out studies and chronicled the pharmacological potentials of Ocimum species, documents containing these data seem to be disassembled, making it difficult to really distinguish the pharmacologically useful species from those that are not and also to get comprehensive information about the medicinal species in this genus. Hence, the aim of this review is to outline classified information on the ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry and pharmacological importance of some Ocimum species that have been reported by different researchers. In carrying-out this review, the search for literature was done via relevant databases including PubMed, Springer, Web of Science, Science Direct, Embase, SciFinder, Google Scholar and Scopus. The species reviewed are the most widely used from the Ocimum genus in traditional medicine and they are also the most researched for intended use in conventional therapeutic practice. Literature reveals that these species contain several compounds which are responsible for the numerous pharmacological activities elicited by them including antimalarial, anticancer, antidiabetic, antiinflammatory and antioxidant effects.
Downloads
References
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Chinedu Enegide and Ofili Charles C
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions and will retain publishing rights without restrictions.
The submitted papers are assumed to contain no proprietary material unprotected by patent or patent application; responsibility for technical content and for protection of proprietary material rests solely with the author(s) and their organizations and is not the responsibility of the journal. The main (first/corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the article has been seen and approved by all the other authors. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain all necessary copyright release permissions for the use of any copyrighted materials in the manuscript prior to the submission.
What are my rights as an author?
It is important to check the policy for the journal to which you are submitting or publishing to establish your rights as
Author. Journal's standard policies allow the following re-use rights:
- The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions.
- The journal allows the author(s) to obtain publishing rights without restrictions.
- You may do whatever you wish with the version of the article you submitted to the journal.
- Once the article has been accepted for publication, you may post the accepted version of the article on your own personal website, your department's website or the repository of your institution without any restrictions.
- You may not post the accepted version of the article in any repository other than those listed above (i.e. you may not deposit in the repository of another institution or a subject-matter repository) until 12 months after publication of the article in the journal.
- You may use the published article for your own teaching needs or to supply on an individual basis to research colleagues, provided that such supply is not for commercial purposes.
