Systematic review: Medicinal use and scientific elucidation of the Piper genus for the treatment of symptoms and inflammatory diseases

Abstract

The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review that reported the medicinal use of the genus Piper, and pharmacological elucidations for the treatment of symptoms and processes of inflammation and inflammatory diseases. The systematic review was prepared in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. The databases used for this research were the Web of Science and Scopus, where associations with the terms were applied in both databases: "Piper" and "Ethnobotanical" and "Piper" and "Anti-inflammatory effect". Initially, the research identified 153 articles, of which 24 articles were selected for final analysis following the inclusion criteria. The results indicate that the medicinal use of species of the Piper genus entails mainly using of leaves, roots, and fruits, and decoct, maceration and powder for the treatment of inflammatory and respiratory diseases such as asthma and bronchitis. Regarding the evaluation of the anti-inflammatory effect of the genus, only seven species presented studies with their scientifically proven anti-inflammatory effect. Biases in the methodology applied in the studies were observed. In this systematic review, it was noticed that both studies addressed have gaps that can cause damage to future research and that pharmacological studies for inflammation with the use of the species themselves are still limited, with a more job for the isolated compounds of these plants. Key words: Piper, medicinal, ethnobotanic, anti-inflammatory effect.