Evidence-Based Ethnomedicinal Plants for Clinical Practice

Plants are an indispensable source of many essentials for human beings from time immemorial. Apart from many functions, they continue to act as important sources of various medicinal ingredients capable of treating many illnesses. Plants used by indigenous and ancient people explicitly living in remote areas far from access to urbanized habitat for their therapeutic needs are mainly referred to as ethnomedicinal plants (EMPs). Primitively, human beings meet most of their needs from nature, including the sources for disease prevention and treatment, primarily met by different plants, later referred to as ethnomedicinal plants in particular or medicinal plants in general. Harnessing the healing power of medicinal plants is very important to treat an array of diseases. Despite advances in scientific research and drug development process, factors like affordability, accessibility, toxicity, and lack of awareness have become limitations for the use of synthetic or chemical drugs as a source of medicines for various illnesses by a large section of people across the globe. Ethnomedical plants treat many diseases, from contagious or infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases like diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and many more. Isolation, purification, and evaluation of the active component of the phytochemicals present in different parts of the EMPs in in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies are essential to use these chemical molecules or extracts of these plants more efficiently. These activities will facilitate identifying and validating the therapeutic properties of ethnomedicinal plants or their products against different diseases through scientific evidence. This exercise will enable the scientist to identify the lead compound from specific plant or plant products to use as a principal compound for developing effective drugs that can be used specifically to treat particular ailments. Thus, evidence-based EMPs for different diseases will serve as curated sources, accelerating the drug development program.