Therapeutic effects of Anacardium occidentale: an integrative review

• Autor(a) principal: Padilha, Janine Agra
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Vieira, Laís Nóbrega, Magalhães, Viviane Fernandes, Reginato, Raphael Edson Dias, Lima, Caliandra Maria Bezerra Luna, Diniz, Margareth de Fátima Formiga Melo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Acta Brasiliensis (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://revistas.ufcg.edu.br/ActaBra/index.php/actabra/article/view/368

Anacardium occidentale is characterized as a medicinal plant, member of the Anacardiaceae family. Different parts of the plant have multiple pharmaceutical properties, which are related to their derivatives and high levels of secondary metabolites. Thus, the aim of the study is to identify evidence available in the literature about the herbal properties of A. occidentale in articles published in the last ten years. This is an integrative literature review using descriptors in the Virtual Health Library (VHL) used in the PubMed and SciELO databases. In such a way, the research resulted in 603 articles and, after employing the inclusion and exclusion criteria, totaled 51 publications for the full analysis. 97 different properties of A. occidentale were found: anti-inflammatory; antioxidant; antimicrobial; antidiabetic; healing; analgesic; effects on the digestive tract; in the autonomic nervous, respiratory and blood system; hypotensive and cardio inhibitory effects; protective against male sexual dysfunction; antimutagenic, antimetastatic and clastogenic; odontological use; toxic and non-toxic effect and others. The antimicrobial effect was the main one to be reported, however, its applicability in phytotherapy is diverse, having a significant capacity to act in pharmacological treatments if there is adequate contribution to research and development of new drugs.