Ciba Found Symp. 1994 ; 185(): 42-51; discussion 51-9.

Ethnopharmacology and drug development.

Farnsworth NR.

Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago 60612.

The value of ethanomedical information in drug development is based on several factors: accuracy in recording or observing the medical use of the ethnomedical preparation, whether or not the ethnomedical use can be corroborated under scientific conditions in the laboratory, the formal or informal experience of the practitioner who provides the information, the role of the placebo effect and perhaps many others. Published ethnomedical information has many strengths and weaknesses relative to the ability to establish a corresponding biological effect in the laboratory. Many of the publications contain insufficient detail for the laboratory scientist. The ability to correlate ethnomedical reports with corresponding scientific studies could lead to improved selection of plants for further study in the areas of arthritis, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, malaria, pain and fungal and viral infections. These analyses have been accomplished by computer analysis utilizing the NAPRALERT database. This combination of analysing ethnomedical information and published scientific studies on plant extracts (ethnopharmacology) may reduce the number of plants that need to be screened for drug discovery attempts, resulting in a corresponding greater success rate than by random selection and mass bioscreening.