Abstract
The most accessible points of call for most African populations with respect to primary health care are traditional health systems that include spiritual, religious, and herbal medicine. This review focusses only on the use of herbal medicines. Most African people accept herbal medicines as generally safe with no serious adverse effects. However, the overlap between conventional medicine and herbal medicine is a reality among countries in health systems transition. Patients often simultaneously seek treatment from both conventional and traditional health systems for the same condition. Commonly encountered conditions/diseases include malaria, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, tuberculosis, and bleeding disorders. It is therefore imperative to understand the modes of interaction between different drugs from conventional and traditional health care systems when used in treatment combinations. Both conventional and traditional drug entities are metabolized by the same enzyme systems in the human body, resulting in both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics interactions, whose properties remain unknown/unquantified. Thus, it is important that profiles of interaction between different herbal and conventional medicines be evaluated. This review evaluates herbal and conventional drugs in a few African countries and their potential interaction at the pharmacogenomics level.
Highlights
It has been observed that an increasing number of people in developed and developing countries use herbal products for both preventive and therapeutic purposes
We report on the use of medicinal herbal plants in the era of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and increasing non-communicable diseases, and their pharmacogenetics implications, focusing on Southern and West African populations
This article examined similarities in the use of allopathic and herbal medicines in African populations undergoing transitions in health, with malaria, HIV, hypertension, TB, and bleeding disorders being used as examples
Summary
It has been observed that an increasing number of people in developed and developing countries use herbal products for both preventive and therapeutic purposes. Often the use of herbal medicines is associated with attenuation of side-effects produced from therapeutic drugs [1]. For centuries humanity has used plants for medicinal purposes and over the last few decades there has been a most remarkable revival of herbal medicine. This has been partly due to the elusive cure for HIV/AIDS that has prompted many countries to refocus their attention on herbal medicinal plants, with increased funding being poured into related research areas.
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