Antimalarial compounds isolated from plants used in traditional medicine

This review covers the compounds with antiplasmodial activity isolated from plants published from 2005 to the end of 2008, organized according to their phytochemical classes. Details are given for substances with IC50 values < or = 11 microm.

Malaria is a major parasitic disease in many tropical and subtropical regions and is responsible for more than 1 million deaths each year in Africa. The rapid spread of resistance encourages the search for new active compounds. Nature and particularly plants used in traditional medicine are a potential source of new antimalarial drugs as they contain molecules with a great variety of structures and pharmacological activities.

A large number of antimalarial compounds with a wide variety of structures have been isolated from plants and can play a role in the development of new antimalarial drugs. Ethnopharmacological approaches appear to be a promising way to find plant metabolites that could be used as templates for designing new derivatives with improved properties.