Prøveforelesning
Se prøveforelesningBedømmelseskomité
Andrea Pieroni, Departement of Pharmacy, University of Bradford, Storbritannia
Anna Katharina Jäger, Department of Medical Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Danmark
Stig Pedersen-Bjergaard, Farmasøytisk institutt, Universitetet i Oslo
Sammendrag
In the project we interviewed 106 healers in the markets in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and obtained information on toxic plants that they use for curing certain illnesses. The information was on how they use the plants, what signs of toxicity they observe and also what remedies they used to avoid the toxic effects.
We also screened the scientific literature for the plants under study and compared the information found whit that we were given from the healers. Thus we could identify the toxic compounds in some of the plants.
Plants, both medicinal and edible, were analyzed for their content of both toxic and valuable metal ions in order to determine if toxic levels could be found or if some of the plants were especially rich in certain nutritionally important metal ions. Our results showed that none of the plants studied contained toxic levels of metal ions, and a few of them did contain high amounts of iron, indicating that they could be of value as an iron-source.
Several of the plants were found to contain compound with anti-oxidant and radical scavenging activities. One of the plants, Lannea velutina, was shown to contain a large range of proanthocynaidins which also had a protective effect against glutamate induced cell death.
Anti-oxidants may be important for the prevention of several human illnesses. For the population in Mali it is of great importance to obtain knowledge both on the bioactivity and the nature of the bioactive compounds so that so-called Improved Traditional Medicines can be produced in a controlled manner, and the healers can also be given knowledge about the efficacy and possible toxicity of plants the use.
Kontaktperson
For mer informasjon, kontakt Karen Marie Ulshagen.