Abstract

RAMIREZ CARDENAS, Alexander; ISAZA MEJIA, Gustavo  and  PEREZ CARDENAS, Jorge Enrique. VEGETAL SPECIES STUDIED BY THEIR ANTIMICROBIAL, IMMUNOMODULATORY AND HYPOGLICEMIC PROPERTIES IN CALDAS-COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA. Biosalud [online]. 2013, vol.12, n.1, pp.59-82. ISSN 1657-9550.

The use of medicinal herbage plants with therapeutic purposes in the primary health careattention of the health, is a frequent practice in the Colombian coffee zonetriangle. Our research line group has done carried out some ethnopharmacologic studies in this zone, selecting some vegetal species to evaluate the possible antimicrobial, immunomodulating and hypoglycemic activity. The present review describes the nine species studied, with a short brief botanic description, common names, traditional empiric uses, phytochemistry, and emphasizing in on the biological activity found in the literature or in our assaysresearch. The findings of this review establish that, in this region environment, the medical use of plants is a habitual usual practice, with different indications for a the same vegetal species (a lot of them do notnot even validated scientifically), not always match the uses in different regions of common ethnic or culture cultural common ancestry not always match and even less in dispersewhen there are different ancestry regions; sometimes the experimental result does not validate the tradicional and empiric therapeutic indication but before to stablishestablishing such this indication as invalid, several pre-clinic and clinic trials must be carried out in order toshould be done some preclinical and clinical assays to search for the efficacy and safety. Due to the enormous biodiversity of Colombian flora it would be thought that there is have an extensive research about their its pharmacology and phytochemistry, but really there are a very few species validated by chemical and biological studies.; forFor this reason, there are very low medical and economic exploitation of this flora. In our country only a few Universities promote the research in this field and have not support of the pharmaceutical industry or of the government or private agencies is not observed. By Because of political and cultural reasons, the Indian indigenous communities are reluctant to share his their ancestral empiric ethnopharmacologic knowledgment knowledge with other social groups. Five species shown showed promissory immunostimulant activity by increasing leukocyte counts:. Alternanthera williamsii (Standley) Standley var. purpurea, Amaranthaceae family, Ludwigia polygonoides H.B.K., Onagraceae family, Phenax rugosus (Poir.) Wedd, Urticaceae family, Solanum dolichosepalum Bitter, Solanaceae family and Tabebuia chrysantha (Jacq) Nichols, Bignoniaceae family; five species: Alternanthera williamsii (Standley) Standley var. purpurea, Ludwigia polygonoides H.B.K., Austroeupatorium inulaefolium (H.B.K.) R. M. King & H. Rob., Senna reticulata (Willd) H. Irwin and Solanum dolichosepalum Bitter, have some important antibacterial effect on Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli y Pseudomona aeruginosa.

Keywords : biologic agents; antibacterial agents; antifungal agents; antiviral agents; hypoglycemic activity.

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