Antiparasitic activities of medicinal plants: An overview

Abstract

Several of the parasites have become resistant to chemotherapy, so alternatives are urgently required. Natural products still play an important role in therapy: between 1981 and 2006, 1,184 new drugs were registered of which 28% were natural products or their derivatives. Another 24% of the new drugs had pharmacophores (functional groups with pharmacological activity) derived from natural products. In this review, PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, EBSCO, Science Direct, and Scopus were searched for medicinal plants with antiparasitic, antiprotozoal, molluscicidal and insecticidal activity to encourage identification of the active ingredients, determination of clinical efficacy, studying of pharmacokinetic characteristics, investigation of the mode of action and safety.