Plants with anticonvulsant properties: a review

• Autor(a) principal: Quintans Júnior,Lucindo J.
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Almeida,Jackson R.G.S., Lima,Julianeli T., Nunes,Xirley P., Siqueira,Jullyana S., Oliveira,Leandra Eugênia Gomes de, Almeida,Reinaldo N., Athayde-Filho,Petrônio F. de, Barbosa-Filho,José M.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-695X2008000500026
• topic: Medicinal plants; Natural products; convulsion; anticonvulsant properties; animal models; review

Seizures are resistant to treatment with currently available anticonvulsant drugs in about 1 out of 3 patients with epilepsy. Thus, there is a need for new, more effective anticonvulsant drugs for intractable epilepsy. However, nature is a rich source of biological and chemical diversity and a number of plants in the world have been used in traditional medicine remedies, i.e., anticonvulsant, anxiolytic, analgesic, antidepressant. This work constitutes a literature review on medicinal plants showing anticonvulsant properties. The review refers to 16 Brazilian plants and a total 355 species, their families, geographical distribution, the utilized parts, method and references. Some aspects of research on medicinal plants and a brief review of the most common animal models to discover antiepileptic drugs are discussed. For this purpose over 170 references were consulted.