ABSTRACT
Many of the plant species used as antimalarials in traditional medicine have been subjected to laboratory investigations in an attempt to provide evidence to support their clinical use. Often, these studies have been limited to determining the activities of crude extracts of the plants against malaria parasites in vitro or in vivo, although in many cases the compounds responsible for the antiplasmodial effects have been isolated, identified, and assessed for their antimalarial activities (for recent reviews see Camacho Corona et al., 2000; Wright, 2002). In contrast, very few antimalarial plants and their active constituents have undergone pharmacological studies to investigate their antimalarial modes of action, the mechanisms by which toxic effects may occur, and their pharmacokinetic properties, but this information is required if traditional antimalarials or compounds derived from them are to be employed for the effective and safe treatment of malaria. The purpose of this chapter is to review the pharmacological properties of the antimalarial constituents of a number of important traditional antimalarial plants that have been investigated in more detail.
