By: Amin Shah, Sarvat Rahim, Zarqa Bashir, Asif Abbas
Shah, Shoaib Shah, Shahzad Hussain, Nuzhat Rasul, Summaya Arif, Ifra
Akhtar, Ihsan Ullah, Mahmooda Hassan
Key Words: Medicinal plants,
Ethnic communities,
Frequency citation (FC), Mirgi, Asteraceae
Many plants are claimed to be effective to treat epilepsy, but very
little knowledge is available about such plants used by various ethnic
communities in Pakistan. This study presents the first report on the
ethnobomedicinal knowledge among the local communities of Sargodha
region, Pakistan in this regards by using quantitative ethnobotanical
approaches. 84 aboriginal households (house-to-house interviews)
including 10 traditional healers who still practiced their aboriginal
system of medicine were interviewed to collect information on the herbal
preparations used by them to treat epilepsy. Data were documented by
using semi-structured questionnaires to consult the residents about
their awareness of plant used against epilepsy. Documented data was
assessed using frequency of citation (FC) preference ranking (PR),
percentage of respondents having knowledge about the use of species
(PRK) and Relative Frequency Citation (RFC). A total of 49 plant species
belonging to 45 genera and 34 families were reported to cure epilepsy.
The highest percentage of life form was found to be the herbs (63.2%).
The Leaves were the dominant plant part with 29.4% and most of the
herbal medicines were prepared in the form of decoction (54%). Plants
with the highest RFC values were Bacopa monnieri (0.61) followed by Xanthium strumarium (0.57), Achyranthes aspera (0.51) and Citrus maxima (0.44). High proportion of respondents (PRK) was found for Bacopa monnieri (61.2%) followed by Xanthium strumarium (57.1%), Achyranthes aspera (51.0%) and Citrus maxima
(44.8%). The study will be used as baseline data for analysing
phytochemical constituents and bioactive compounds of these promising
medicinal plants. Get the full articles at: J. Bio. Env. Sci. 16(1), 15-24, January 2020.


Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences-JBES is an open-access scholarly research journal, published by International Network for Natural Sciences-INNSPUB. JBES published original scientific articles in different field of Environmental Sciences and Biodiversity. JBES published 2 Volume and 12 issue per calender year.
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