Medicinal plants with popular names associated with manufactured drugs in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil

Abstract

Medicinal plants used by the population in southern Brazil have been observed to be popularly referred to by the names of manufactured drugs. This study aimed to find a connection between the use of medicinal plant species with popular names associated with manufactured drugs and the actual biomedical system. A database regarding such medicinal plants was established based on thirty-four ethnobotanical studies undertaken in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and chemical and pharmacological information was collected from a scientific article database and crossed referenced to determine whether folk information was correlated. Thirty-one species with a total of twenty-five different popular names of manufactured drugs were found. The greatest number of popular names of manufactured drugs was for Alternanthera brasiliana with eight names, followed by Achillea millefolium with six. The therapeutic indication of the species used in the manufactured formulas was found to differ from the indications of popular use. However, the therapeutic indication of both were correlated for digestive disorders, as well as for popularly named phytotherapic species. Cultural adoption of popular names may be influenced by the biomedical system and the flow of knowledge arising from conventional medicine toward popular medicine.