Abstract

Background: Leishmaniasis is an infectious tropical vector born disease imposing high burden in developing countries including Ethiopia. Its treatment is still using pentavalent antimonial which have been used for several years and prone to drug resistance. Other alternative drugs like amphotericin B also have horrible side effects. Therefore, new drugs are urgently needed and drug screening efforts should be encouraged. No review has been done that broadly indicates medicinal plants used to treat leishmaniasis. The aim of this review was to provide an overview of the Ethnobotany of medicinal plants used to treat leishmaniasis in Ethiopia.

Materials and methods: Databases (Pub Med, Google Scholar, Research Gate, and Hinari) were searched for published articles on the Ethnobotany of medicinal plants used to treat leishmaniasis in Ethiopia without restriction in the year of publication or methodology. Some studies were also identified with manual Google search. Primary search terms were “Leishmania review”, “Leishmaniasis” “Ethiopia”, “medicinal plants” and “Ethnobotany”. Studies that did not contain full ethnobotanical data on to medicinal plants traditionally used to treat Leishmaniasis and plants which are out of flora list of Ethiopia were excluded from this review.

Results: The database search produced a total of 206 articles. After adjustment for duplicates and inclusion and exclusion criteria, 11 articles were found appropriate for the review. Majority o the studies were qualitative in nature and some were mixed type. None of the medicinal plants traditionally used to treat leishmaniasis in Ethiopia are confirmed scientifically. Of the 28 plants identified from the various studies, 53.6% were herbs and the common plant part used was leaf (44.8%) followed by latex (20.7%). Majority of the plant remedies were given topically (75.7%). Cutaneous leishmaniasis comprises high percentage of leishmania infection treated by traditional medicinal plants.

Conclusion: Varity of medicinal plants have been used by Ethiopian people of different cultures to treat leishmaniasis. Most of the plants were herbs and the commonly used plant part was leaf. Majority of prepared remedies were applied externally to the affected part. There is an urgent need to conduct clinical trials on such plants to support traditional claims and to analyze molecular and cellular mechanisms involved.

Keywords: Ethnobotany; Leishmaniasis; Medicinal plants; Review; Ethiopia