Abstract
The interest of the scientific community in the exploration of natural products as novel anticancer agents has been paralleled by an increase in the number of field studies documenting the practice of traditional medicines, especially plants, in different countries across the world. Nonetheless, a comprehensive compilation and analysis of data from these surveys has not been undertaken so far. The aim of this study is to systematically review ethnopharmacological surveys conducted worldwide and to document the various plant species used for the management of cancer. Key scientific databases including Sciencedirect, Medline/PubMed, and Google Scholar were scrutinized. Two hundred and fifteen surveys were reviewed in the present work which dated from 1980 to 2019. A total of 948 plant species from 153 families and 628 genera were reported to be used against cancer in a total of 62 countries. Leguminosae (61 genera and 91 species) and Compositae (50 genera and 76 species) were the main families with the greatest number of anticancer species. Urtica dioica L., Punica granatum L., Allium cepa L., Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Curcuma longa L, Annona muricata L., Arum palaestinum Boiss., Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don, Aloe vera (L.) Burm. f., and Nigella sativa L. were the main species reported. Most species were documented against breast cancer (Family: n = 73, Species: n = 236) and skin cancer (Family: n = 60, Species: n = 169). The country with the greatest number of species reported was Ghana, followed by Palestine, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Kenya, Pakistan, and South Africa. Leaves (33%) were the most preferred part used and decoction (55%) was mainly used for preparation. Oral administration was mostly used except for skin cancer whereby topical application was reported. This study is the first of its kind to document the global use of traditional medicinal plants against cancer. It is recommended that another systematic review be designed to highlight and criticially analyze the pharmacological properties and identify those potent anticancer species which have been scientifically validated.
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