Abstract
The present review was aimed at documenting medicinal uses of species of the Euphorbiaceae family in Zimbabwe. Literature was collected from online databases such as BioMed Central, Web of Science, Springerlink, Google Scholar, Scielo, PubMed, Science Direct, ACS Publications, Scopus and JSTOR. This study showed that 29 species are used to manage human and animal diseases in Zimbabwe. These species are used against 49 medical conditions, mainly as ethnoveterinary medicine (21 use reports), and traditional medicine against respiratory (23 use reports), gastro-intestinal (14 use reports), male reproductive (11 use reports), antenatal and postpartum (10 use reports each) and sexually transmitted infections (9 use reports). Acalypha brachiata, Bridelia cathartica, B. mollis, Crotonmegalobotrys, Euphorbia ingens, E. matabelensis, Flueggea virosa, Monadenium lugardiae, Pseudolachnostylis maprouneifolia, Ricinus communisand Spirostachys africanahave the highest number of medicinal uses. There is need to unravel the therapeutic potential of the family through further ethnopharmacological research.
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