BACKGROUND Plant derived components have attracted particular attention as an alternative source to battle several diseases including cancer. The variation in the climate, the geographical location and the rich ethnomedicinal traditions has made the Darjeeling Himalayas an abode of invaluable repository of traditional medicinal plants. In this study, we explored the in vitro anticancer properti...

Baillonella toxisperma, Pentaclethra macrophylla and Trichoscypha abut are important foods for communities living around forests in Cameroon. Information on the nutritional value and bioactive content of these foods is required to establish their contribution to the nutrition and health of the communities. Samples of the three foods were obtained from four villages in east and three villages in...

Gentiana macrophylla, a medicinal plant with significant pharmacological properties, contains the bioactive compound gentiopicroside. Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) is an effective elicitor for enhancing the production of such compounds. However, little is known about MeJA-mediated biosynthesis of gentiopicroside. We investigated this phenomenon as well as gene expression profiles to determine the mol...

The anatomy of young and old stems of Aristolochia macrophylla has been investigated for a better understanding of how secondary growth processes cause changes in the stem anatomy of a lianescent plant. In A. macrophylla, following an increase in volume of secondary vascular tissues, the cortical tissues are deformed and the outer sclerenchymatous cylinder ruptures. Morphometric measurements pr...

Despite its appeal to explain plant invasions, the enemy release hypothesis (ERH) remains largely unexplored for tropical forest trees. Even scarcer are ERH studies conducted on the same host species at both the community and biogeographical scale, irrespective of the system or plant life form. In Cabrits National Park, Dominica, we observed patterns consistent with enemy release of two introdu...

Eremostachys pulvinaris (family: Labiatae), one of the 60 species of the genus Eremostachys, occurs mainly in central Asian countries, e.g. Iran, Armenia, Ashgabad and the USSR. The rhizomes of this plant were collected from Tabriz in Azarbaijan province during September-October 2003. There is no report on any previous phytochemical investigation on E. pulvinaris available todate, phytochemical...

Traditional medicine has provided a number of therapeutic solutions for the control of infectious agents, cancers, and other diseases. After screening a wide variety of Colombian plant extracts, we have identified promising antileishmanial activity in ethanol extracts from Ocotea macrophylla (Lauraceae) and Zanthoxyllum monophyllum (Rutaceae). In this study, we evaluated the in vitro activity o...

1 UMAE Hospital de Especialidades Centro Médico Nacional de Occidente IMSS, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 2 UMAE Hospital de Gineco-Obstetricia Centro Médico Nacional de Occidente IMSS, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 3 UMAE HE Centro Medico Nacional de Occidente Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Guadalajara, Mexico, 4 Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, 5 Delegación Jal...

BACKGROUND Medicinal plants are used worldwide for several human ailments including bacterial infections. The present work was designed to assess the in vitro antibacterial activities of some Cameroonian medicinal plants including Entada abyssinica, Entada africana, Pentaclethra macrophylla, Allexis cauliflora, Anthocleista leibrechtsiana, Carapa procera, Carica papaya and Persea americana agai...

Bacterial infections caused by multidrug resistant phenotypes constitute a worldwide health concern. The present study was designed to evaluate the in vitro antibacterial activities of the methanol extracts of five medicinal plants: Fagara macrophylla, Canarium schweinfurthii, Myrianthus arboreus, Dischistocalyx grandifolius and Tragia benthamii against a panel of 28 multidrug resistant Gram-ne...