Abstract
Ethnobotanical knowledge is important among tribal people, but much of the information is empirical due to the lack of scientific validation. The purpose of this study was to document the medicinal plants used by an ethnic group (Yakkha) at Chanuwa VDC of Dhankuta district in Nepal and to validate scientifically in the use of plants based on results of phytochemical, antimicrobial and antioxidant property analyses and available literature reports. Data were collected through interviews of the Yakkha people with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire and the guided field walk method. A total of 30 different medicinal plants were recorded along with their vernacular names (for few plants) used by the Yakkha community’s people. Literature review reveals that most of the plant species described herein have also been used in other countries, too. Among 30 plants selected for this study methanol extract of five ethno-medicinal plants viz., Dendrocnide sinuata, Solanum anguivi, Pogostemon cablin, Boehmeria platyphylla and Clerodendrum trichotomum and ethanol extract of C. trichotomum were subjected for antibacterial and antioxidant properties. The antimicrobial activities were measured using the paper disc diffusion method. The antioxidant properties of plants were measured by DPPH and FRAP reduction assay. Among all extracts, ethanol extract of C. trichotomum and methanol extract of B. platyphylla displayed the highest antibacterial and antioxidant activities, respectively.
Highlights
Natural resources have been a huge and diversified chemical bank
Plant species used in traditional medicine The present finding reveals that the Yakkha people of the study area have good knowledge on the use of different medicinal plant species for their own local health care system
It is found that they make the uses of some 30 species of medicinal plants belonging to 25 families with curing different ailments/diseases by using their own indigenous knowledge system
Summary
Natural resources have been a huge and diversified chemical bank. Of large number of modern drugs isolated from natural sources, identification of significant number of plant-based drugs has been guided by their traditional use as medicine (Newman and Cragg 2007; Balunas and Kinghorn 2005; Zhang 2002). In recent years much attention has been paid to plants as a source of therapeutic agents due to their medicinal value (e.g. antimicrobial and antioxidants properties), the reasonable cost, easy availability, and relatively lower incident of other adverse effects compared to synthetic pharmaceuticals. In other words, this is due to increased awareness of the limited ability of synthetic pharmaceutical products to control major diseases and the need to discover new molecular structures as lead compounds from the plant kingdom (N’guessan et al 2007; Thomas 1997). Antioxidants can delay, inhibit or prevent the oxidation of oxidizable materials by scavenging free radicals and diminishing oxidative damage (Duracková 2010)
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