Abstract
There is no ethnobotanical study conducted specifically on medicinal plants traditionally used to treat cancer in Ethiopia. Yet, traditional herbalists in different parts of the country claim that they have been treating cancer-like symptoms using herbal remedies. The objective of this study was to document medicinal plants traditionally used to treat cancer-like symptoms in eleven districts, Ethiopia. Traditional herbalists were interviewed using semistructured questionnaires, and field visits were also carried out to collect claimed plants for identification purpose. Seventy-four traditional herbalists, who claimed that they knew about and/or had used medicinal plants to treat cancer-like symptoms, were selected using the snowball method and interviewed. Herbalists used their intuition and relied on the chronicity, growth of external mass, and spreading of the disease to other parts of the body, as a means to characterize cancer symptoms. Furthermore, in some of the study districts, herbalists reported that they treat patients who had already been diagnosed in modern healthcare institutions prior to seeking help from them. The inventory of medicinal plants is summarized in a synoptic table, which contains the scientific and vernacular names of the plants, their geographical location, the parts of the plants, and the methods used to prepare the remedies. A total of 53 traditionally used anticancer plants, belonging to 30 families, were identified during the survey. The most frequently reported anticancer plants were Acmella caulirhiza Del (Asteraceae), Clematis simensis Fresen. (Ranunculaceae), Croton macrostachyus Del. (Euphorbiaceae), and Dorstenia barnimiana Schweinf. (Moraceae). Organizing traditional healers, documenting their indigenous knowledge, and scientifically validating it for the development of better cancer therapeutic agents constitute an urgent and important task for policymakers and scientists.
Highlights
Cancer is a complex disease that is very heterogenic and variable at cellular level and differs from one patient to the other in its behaviour, development, and outcome [1]
A total of 53 plant species belonging to 30 families were reported for their anticancer use (Table 3). e result of this study showed that shrubs (49.1%), herbs (33.9%), trees (13.2%), and climbers (3.8%) were the main sources of potential anticancer medicinal plants. is study indicated that leaves (56.7%) were the most commonly used plant parts followed by roots (21.7%), bark (6.7%), stem (1.7%), seeds (1.7%), whole plant (1.7%), leaves and roots (5%), leaves or stem (1.7%), and leaves or seeds (1.7%) (Figure 3)
Our result shows that the Pearson correlation coefficient of relative frequency of citation (RFC) was positively and negatively correlated to cultural importance index (CI) and use value (UV), respectively (Table 6)
Summary
Cancer is a complex disease that is very heterogenic and variable at cellular level and differs from one patient to the other in its behaviour, development, and outcome [1]. Metabolic, and behavioural variations of cancer cells from normal ones arise through the accumulation of genetic modifications and help them to proliferate rapidly, escape from host immune surveillance, and invade distant tissues [2]. Histopathological, genetic, and epigenetic and clinical outcome variations between and within different types of cancers have been the greatest challenge to understand the disease and develop novel therapies [3]. Most of the chemotherapeutic drugs lack specificity and tend to rapidly damage normal dividing tissues, causing side effects such as immunosuppression, neurotoxicity, and hair loss [6]. Resistance has reduced therapeutic efficacy of some anticancer chemotherapeutic drugs [7]
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