Ethnopharmacology of medicinal plants traditionally used in the Greater Mpigi region, Uganda
type: CreativeWork
description: Relevance: This PhD thesis provides an ethnopharmacological assessment of 16 medicinal plant species used by traditional healers for the treatment of various infectious and inflammatory diseases in the Greater Mpigi region of Uganda. It includes the first detailed report on selected medicinal plant use in the local traditional medicine system. The ethnobotanical data obtained supports the conservation of local traditional knowledge and will enable future drug discovery research. As conventional drug therapies are becoming increasingly limited and inefficacious, some of the greatest threats to global health today are addressed in this work, including antibiotic resistance, malaria, cancer, inflammation, and related symptoms such as pain and fever. Aims of the PhD thesis: The overarching objectives were 1) the documentation of the medicinal use of (often understudied) plant species; 2) the development of a bibliographic assessment tool for selection of medicinal plants for lab studies; 3) the creation of a plant extract library; 4) the pharmacological in vitro assessment of these species regarding their respective traditional uses; 5) the contribution to early drug discovery stages and thereby the provision of a scientific basis for future drug lead identification endeavors; and 6) the integration of aspects of community work while fostering a bidirectional communication with indigenous communities. Methods: The results of diverse ethnopharmacological field research methods and pharmacological lab assays are reported in this dissertation, including a) an ethnobotanical survey using structured interviews with 39 traditional healers from 29 villages; b) the novel Degrees of Publication (DoP) method; c) antibacterial screenings against a panel of clinical isolates of multidrug-resistant human pathogens; d) antivirulence experiments, e.g., monitoring of quorum sensing inhibition and direct protein output (δ-toxin) in Staphylococcus aureus; e) antiinflammatory investigatio…
abstract: Relevance: This PhD thesis provides an ethnopharmacological assessment of 16 medicinal plant species used by traditional healers for the treatment of various infectious and inflammatory diseases in the Greater Mpigi region of Uganda. It includes the first detailed report on selected medicinal plant use in the local traditional medicine system. The ethnobotanical data obtained supports the conservation of local traditional knowledge and will enable future drug discovery research. As conventional drug therapies are becoming increasingly limited and inefficacious, some of the greatest threats to global health today are addressed in this work, including antibiotic resistance, malaria, cancer, inflammation, and related symptoms such as pain and fever. Aims of the PhD thesis: The overarching objectives were 1) the documentation of the medicinal use of (often understudied) plant species; 2) the development of a bibliographic assessment tool for selection of medicinal plants for lab studies; 3) the creation of a plant extract library; 4) the pharmacological in vitro assessment of these species regarding their respective traditional uses; 5) the contribution to early drug discovery stages and thereby the provision of a scientific basis for future drug lead identification endeavors; and 6) the integration of aspects of community work while fostering a bidirectional communication with indigenous communities. Methods: The results of diverse ethnopharmacological field research methods and pharmacological lab assays are reported in this dissertation, including a) an ethnobotanical survey using structured interviews with 39 traditional healers from 29 villages; b) the novel Degrees of Publication (DoP) method; c) antibacterial screenings against a panel of clinical isolates of multidrug-resistant human pathogens; d) antivirulence experiments, e.g., monitoring of quorum sensing inhibition and direct protein output (δ-toxin) in Staphylococcus aureus; e) antiinflammatory investigatio…
author: Schultz, Fabien
language: en
license: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:28:26Z
provider: Technische Universität Berlin
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Technische Universität Berlin

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.14279/depositonce-12048