Clerodendrum volubile P. Beauv (Lamiaceae), an underutilized indigenous vegetable of utmost nutritive and pharmacological importance

Abstract

Clerodendrum volubile is an underutilized vegetable native to West Africa most especially Nigeria. The plant is used traditionally in the treatment of arthritis, diabetes, dropsy, gout rheumatism, dropsy, swellings, oedema, and analgesic. The ethnopharmacological potential of C. volubile through its phytochemistry, biological activities, and proximate analysis was reviewed for the first time. Published articles on C. volubile were sourced from scientific data bases such as Google Scholar, Medicine, PubMed, Science Direct, and Scopus. C. volubile contains appreciable quantity of phytochemicals and compounds such as ajugoside, pectolinarigenin, protocatechuic acid, biochanin, and 5, 7,4′-Trimethoxykaempferol. It also elicited wide range of biological activities such as antidiabetic, antihyperlipidemic, anti-hypertension, antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, antimicrobial, and analgesic. C. volubile is a potential pharmaceutical agent especially in the treatment of cancer due to the ability of its extracts to scavenge reactive oxygen species. Future research should focus on isolation of bioactive compounds responsible for elicited activities and mechanism of action of the bioactivities through in vivo studies.